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PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE 



PROFESSOR LADD'S WORKS. 



PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE. An Inquiry into 
the Nature, Limits, and Validity of Human Cognitive Fac- 
ulty. 8vo. $4.00. 

PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. An Essay in the Metaphysics 
of Psychology. 8vo. $3.00. 

INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY. An Inquiry 
after a Rational System of Scientific Principles in their 
Relation to Ultimate Reality. 8vo. $3 00. 

PRIMER OF PSYCHOLOGY. i 2 mo. $1.00 net. 

PSYCHOLOGY; DESCRIPTIVE AND EXPLANA- 
TORY. A Treatise of the Phenomena, Laws, and Develop- 
ment of Human Mental Life. 8vo. $4.50. 

OUTLINES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 
A Text-book on Mental Science for Academies and Colleges. 
Illustrated. 8vo. $2.00. 

ELEMENTS OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 
A Treatise of the Activities and Nature cf the Mind, from 
the Physical and Experimental Point of View. With numer- 
ous illustrations. 8vo. $4.50. 

THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE. A 
Critical, Historical, and Dogmatic Inquiry into the Origin and 
Nature of the Old and New Testaments. 2 vols. 8vo. $7.00. 

WHAT IS THE BIBLE? An Inquiry into the Origin and 
Nature of the Old and New Testaments in the Light of 
Modern Biblical Studv. r2mo. $2.00. 

THE PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH POLITY. Crown 
8vo. $2.50. 






Philosophy of Knowledge 



AN INQUIRY 



INTO 



THE NATURE, LIMITS, AND VALIDITY 



OF 



HUMAN COGNITIVE FACULTY 



BY 

GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN YALE UNIVERSITY 



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NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1897 



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Copyright, 1897, by 
Charles Scribner's Sons. 



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$f?tft 



Hntasitg ^rcss: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



TO 

THOSE WHO 

BY SERIOUS AND PROLONGED 

INQUIRY, HOWEVER SCEPTICAL, ASPIRE 

TO APPROACH THE TRUTH, 

THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY 

AND AFFECTIONATELY 

DEDICATED 



,0 



& 



: 



" Shall we not look into the laws 
Of life and death, and things that seem, 
And things that be, and analyze 
Our double nature ? " 



PREFACE 



'TH^HIS book is an Essay in the interests of some of the 
-*- most profound and difficult of the problems which can 
engage the reflective thinking of man. It would scarcely be 
an exaggeration to say that the nature, limits, and guaranty of 
knowledge afford subjects of inquiry which exceed all others 
in the demand they make for deep and earnest reflection. If 
one were at liberty to construct a Theory of Reality which 
should be simply a logically consistent and symmetrical 
affair, satisfactory to the ideals of the architect but without 
regard to foundations of fact or questions of the right to 
occupy the ground in this way, the task would seem compara- 
tively light. But in this day, and in the face of history, such 
a liberty cannot be intelligently claimed ; much less can it be 
successfully exercised. Facts must be considered, and ques- 
tions of right cannot be thrust aside or overlooked. For 
the former part of one's philosophical basis, the particular 
sciences are now responsible ; for the latter part — the search 
after guide and guaranty — a particular form of philosophical 
discipline, sometimes called epistemology, is invoked. It is 
this form of philosophy which this book undertakes. Its 
author asks that the intrinsic character of its problems, and 
all the perplexities it entails, should be constantly remem- 
bered by the reader. 

I should probably have found my self-imposed task some- 
what less troublesome if I had more predecessors among 



vin PREFACE 

modern writers on philosophy in English. But, so far as I 
am aware, there are none from whom any help is to be de- 
rived. 1 In Germany a considerable number of books, with the 
title UrJcenntnisslehre, or some similar title, have recently ap- 
peared ; and German works on Logic and systematic Philos- 
ophy have generally the merit of dealing in a more thorough 
way with the epistemological problem, wherever they touch 
its sensitive points, than is customary in England or this 
country. Now and then a French writer, too, has afforded 
a hint, or suggestion, of which I have availed myself. So 
far as these helps have been consciously received, they have 
been acknowledged in the few references of the text. But I 
think it fair to ask that this book should be regarded as, 
much more exclusively than often occurs, the outcome of its 
author's own reflections over the difficult questions it essays 
to answer. It asks and should receive the treatment due to 
a pioneer work. 

At the same time it is also true that no other questions, 
practical or philosophical, are being more anxiously considered 
or are more influential over life and conduct than those which 
merge themselves in the epistemological problem. While 
this problem is reflected upon, largely in an unguided and 
illogical way, by multitudes of minds, the authorities, who 
ought also to be guides in reflective thinking, have been of 
late accustomed to reiterate the cry of " Back to Kant ! " As 
a student for years of the critical philosophy, I have not been 
unmindful of the demand to place myself in the line of its 
development of the epistemological inquiry. I have had the 
method and the conclusions of the great master in criticism 
before me, from the beginning to the end of my work. Yet 

1 An exception cannot be made in the case of Mr. Hobhouse's elaborate work, 
" The Theory of Knowledge," since it is confessedly a treatise in Logic rather 
than Epistemology, as I conceive of epistemological problems and method. 



PREFACE ix 

the positions to which my independent investigations have 
forced me are chiefly critical of, and antagonistic to, the posi- 
tions of the Critique of Pure Reason. 

If I may claim any peculiar merit for the method followed 
in discussing the problem of knowledge, it is perhaps chiefly 
this : I have striven constantly to make epistemology vital, — 
a thing of moment, because indissolubly and most intimately 
connected with the ethical and religious life of the age. I 
have no wish to conceal, therefore, the quite unusual interest 
which I take in the success of this book ; I sincerely hope 
that it may be a guide and help to not a few of those minds 
to whom I have dedicated it. 

GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD. 

Yale University, Mav, 1897. 






TABLE OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 
The Problem 

PAGE 

The Anthropological View — Standpoint of Psychology — Appeal to Rea- 
son — Kant's Position in History — Relation to Metaphysics — Freedom 
from Assumption— The Primary Datum — The Dilemma stated — 
Sources of an Answer— The Implicates necessary — The Method to 
be pursued — Practical Benefits expected 1 



CHAPTER II 

History of Opinion 

Purpose of the Sketch — The View of Plato — The Doctrine of Aristotle — 
Post-Aristotelian Schools — Origen's Doctrine of Faith and Knowledge — 
Augustine's Merits in Epistemology — The Middle Ages 30 

CHAPTER HI 

History of Opinion {continued) 

The Position of Descartes — Pioneer Work of Locke — Views of Berkeley 

— Scepticism of Hume — Position of Leibnitz — Kant's Critical "Work ; 
His Problem and Conclusions — Kant's Ethical Interests — Hegel and 

Schopenhauer 57 

CHAPTER IV 

The Psychological View 

Psychology and Epistemology — Origin of Knowledge — Psychic Factors of 
Cognition — Corollaries following — Possibilities of the Case — Cognition 
as Consciousness — as Awareness of an Object — Misstatements criticised 

— Problem restated .„,....•. 94 



Xll 



CONTENTS 






CHAPTER V 



Thinking and Knowing 



Eelations of Thought to Cognition — Views of Others — Thinking as Activ- 
ity — and Positing of Relations — Nature of the Cognitive Judgment — 
Implicates of all Judgment — Conceptual Knowledge and Reasoning . . 



.30 



CHAPTER VI 
Knowledge as Feeling and Willing 

The Psychology of Feeling — Emotional Factors in Cognition — Influence 
on intellectual Development — Impulsive Emotions — Ethical and JEs- 
thetical Feeling — Feelings regulative of Logical Processes — So-called 
" integrating " Emotions — Place of Will in Cognition 160 

CHAPTER VII 

Knowledge of Things and of Self 

Distinction of Subject and Object — Position of Formal Logic — Office of 
Self-Consciousness — Implicates of Reality — Identity of Self as implied 
— Distinction of Things and Self — Diremptive Work of Intellect — The 
Function of Analogy — Epistemology of Perception — and of Science . .193 

CHAPTER VIII 

Degrees, Limits, and Kinds of Knowledge 

Meaning of Terms — Standards of Measurement of Cognition — Relation of 
Knowledge to Life — Nature of Opinion — Possibility of Knowledge in 
Dreams — Distinctions Relative — Essentials of Cognition — Limits not 
Presuppositions — Kinds of Limits — Limits of Perception — and of 
Science — Kinds of Knowledge — Case of Mathematics — Immediate and 
Mediate Knowledge . 228 



CHAPTER IX 

Identity and Difference 

Experience and Cognition — Fundamental Principles of all Knowledge — 
Views of Logic — Meaning of Identity — The Principle as applied to 
Reality 268 



CONTENTS xiii 



CHAPTER X 

Sufficient Reason" 



PAGE 



Nature of Reasoning —Development of Reasoning — Application to Reality 

— Kant's inadequate View — Causation and External Nature Origin of 

the Principle — Use of Cognitive Judgments — Difficulties of Syllogism 

— Concerned in Self-Knowledge — Assumptions involved — Goal of En- 
deavor — The Grounds of Natural Science — Einal Purpose implied . .283 



CHAPTER XI 

Experience and the Transcendent 

Meaning of Experience — The misleading Figures of Speech — Experience 
necessarily Transcendent — Conditions of Experience — and its Laws . 322 



CHAPTER XII 

The Implicates of Knowledge 

The Question stated — Modes of Implication possible — Necessity of Com- 
pleteness of View — Being of Self implied — and of Not-Self — Influence 
of ethical and sesthetical Considerations — System of Ontology involved — 
The principal Categories guaranteed 337 



CHAPTER XIII 

Scepticism, Agnosticism, and Criticism 

Attitudes of Mind toward Truth — Unity of Experience — Sources and 
Value of Scepticism — Limits of Scepticism — Doubts in Perception and 
in Science — Necessity for Agnosticism — Limits of Agnosticism — 
Knowledge positive 367 



CHAPTER XIV 

Alleged " Antinomies " J * 

Effect of the Antinomy — Meaning of the Term — Denial of the Doctrine 

Antinomies — Claims of Kant examined — Mr. Bradley's Views critic Ar nest 
— Application of the Categories to Reality lOIlistic 



xiv CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XV 
Truth and Error 

PAGE 

Nature of the Distinction — Error as non-Truth — Error and Wrong-doing — 
Truth dependent on Judgment — and on the Meaning of Judgment — 
Nature of Mathematical Truth — The Truth of Perception — Truth and 
Error in Science — Foundations of Scientific Knowledge — Sources of 
Error — True Cognition of Self — Criterion of Truth — Belief and 
Reality 424 

CHAPTER XVI 

The Teleology of Knowledge 

Cognition and Action — The Teleology of Perception — and of Conception 
— Final Purpose among the Sciences — Knowledge as End in Itself — 
' Knowledge as Part of Life — Final Purpose in Reality 472 

CHAPTER XVII 

Ethical and ^Esthetical " Momenta " of Knowledge 

Character and Cognition — Influence of Feeling on Judgment — Attribu- 
tion of Ideals to Nature — Benevolence of Law — Limits of the Ethical 
" Momenta " — Characteristics of JEsthetical Consciousness — Beauty in 
Reality — The Epistemological Postulate . . 500 

CHAPTER XVIII 

Knowledge and Reality 

Cognition as Species of " Commerce " — Failures of the Identity-hypothe- 
sis — Distinction in Reality necessary to Knowledge — Truth in all Kinds 
of Cognition — Variety of the real World — Causation as Connection in 
Reality 530 

CHAPTER XIX 

Idealism and Realism 

Experie. * exclusive Views — Tenable Positions of Idealism — Negation of 
Views? ernes — The Truth of Realism — Criticism of its Denials — The 
Reality ;ure of Reality 559 



CONTENTS xv 

CHAPTER XX 
Dualism and Monism 

PAGE 

Conceptions of Number applied to Reality — Unity and Duality of Body and 
Mind — Unity of the Self — Defects of extreme Dualism — The Truth 
and the Limitations of Monism 574 

CHAPTER XXI 

Knowlege and the Absolute 

Final Position of Agnosticism — Explication of Terms — Danger from ab- 
stract Conceptions — Unchanging Laws of Cognition — Presence of the 
Absolute in Consciousness — The comprehensive View of Epistemology . 591 



INDEX , 611 



Of 

o deter- 

ild have 

.^iientioned 

ss fade n ce, if 

memory ? 

sciously earnest 

" eudaemonistic 



Co 

h 

of Co 

Reality 



Experie. * exclusive 
Views -ernes — 'I 
Reality ;ure of 



PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE 



CHAPTER I 

THE PROBLEM 

THE struggles of the mind of man to come to a satis- 
factory understanding with itself are among the most 
interesting exhibitions of his greatness. This is true from 
whichever of several points of view we regard the phenomena. 
For suppose that — disregarding for the moment the more 
distinctively metaphysical considerations — we appro" oh the 
subject in the light of the biological and anthrorJto ghoul 
sciences. The surpassingly strange spectacle of anh" are 
which is not content with the occupations prompts which 
restless and almost unceasing practical curiosity, nor £ hypo- 
simply to learn how it may possess and use the instrier the 
of its own temporary well-being, is certainly most atgnition, 
to a reflective mind. During certain periods ake, we intro- 
existence the human animal exhibits a sols problem cannot 
the truth of its own being; it becomes cropological point of 
validity of its knowledge of the being : 
things. But why should not man be sat research to deter- 
mere living, a fairly uninterrupted succekince would have 
states of feeling, and to let the painful expert-mentioned 
trouble the flow of the stream of consciousness fade n ce, if 
in the dreamlike illusoriness of an animal's memory ? 

Like the other higher animals, man is consciously earnest 
and absorbed in the pursuit of various forms of eudaemonistic 

1 



2 THE PROBLEM 

good. But unlike all the other animals, so far as we are 
able to get behind the barriers interposed between us and 
their psychical states, man comes to regard this very concep- 
tion of " truth " as something in itself good. Then he turns 
upon his own reason with a complaint which is frequently 
bitter, or with a self-accusation of impotence which may 
become savage, in the demand that it should furnish him 
with a more complete authentication for the good which 
bears this peculiar form. Moreover, the truth, as he con- 
ceives of it, is in his thought correlated with what he calls 
" reality. " Indeed, what he means by that kind of truth, 
which he needs to possess in order fully to satisfy the 
demands of reason, is not definable without an implicate of 
reality. But why, again, as merely the highest form of 
animal life, should man alone among all the species not be 
satisfied with appearances, if only they be of a pleasant char- 
acter? Why should he insist on dissecting his puppets to 
dete- ne whether they have the anatomy of actual living 
or not ; why be so eager to disturb the interest in the 
z appearance by exposing too cruelly the actual mech- 
)f the strings ? We can discover no wholly adequate 
— no very convincing partial answer — which modern 
has afforded to inquiries such as these. And yet 
' ?. of this kind are undoubted facts in the complex 

%., 

'same phenomena to be approached from 
h and historical points of view. Here it 

of u mied that the unsatisfied need for valid- 

Reality 

in conscious attitudes, the various presen- 
ce, the trains of associated ideas, and the 
incepts, as well as the varied and ceaseless efforts 
jd men make to satisfy this need, have always been most 
important factors to aid in the evolution of the race. All 
merely anthropological theories of evolution, however, appear 
unable to account for the existence of this need ; and we 



THE PROBLEM 3 

believe that they not only are now, but will always remain, 
quite outside of such a task. The right claimed by the 
majority of the students of modern science, distinctly to aim 
at keeping clear of all metaphysics and so-called " theories of 
knowledge," may be conceded. And indeed, if there could 
be knowledge that is not something much more than this 
majority will admit it to be, science itself would consist of 
a succession of presentations of sense, associated ideas, and 
thoughts, about the truth of which no one would ever even 
raise a question. From the merely logical and formal point 
of view, the peculiar kind of syllogism which belongs to 
science, as such, may fitly be called the hypothetical syl- 
logism. Its form is as follows : If A is B, then is D ; 
but whether or not A really is, and whether, admitting that 
both it and B really are, they are actually related as belong- 
ing to the same species, or as reciprocal influences in deter- 
mining the same result, — with this, science need not concern 
itself. Only now, such science could scarcely be called 
knowledge ; much less, truth. For, as we undertake to show 
in detail later on, the words " knowledge " and " truth " are 
significant of mental processes and mental positions which 
can neither be attained nor stated by the use of the hypo- 
thetical syllogism merely. But the moment we consider the 
evolution of science itself as a growth in actual cognition, 
whether on the part of the individual or of the race, we intro- 
duce the epistemological problem ; and this problem cannot 
even be considered from the merely anthropological point of 
view. 

It would furnish a most curious bit of research to deter- 
mine what the development of physical science would have 
been, if only its students had really held the above-mentioned 
conception of it. Would it now continue to advance, if 
investigators and the people generally attached to its con- 
clusions only the significance and validity which belong to 
dreams ? However we might incline to answer this question, 



4 THE PROBLEM 

one thing is sure. " Science," thus conceived of, would 
suffer a mighty and pathetic fall from its place of dignity 
in the present estimate of mankind. Theories of evolution 
as applied to the human race, stand in respect to this instinc- 
tive metaphysical faith, less in the relation of satisfactory 
explanatory causes than of partial effects. They are them- 
selves mental phenomena, for the understanding of which we 
must resort to a study of the constitution of reason itself. 

The conclusion which has just been drawn from a brief 
survey of the merely biological and anthropological aspects 
of our problem may be summarized as follows. What man- 
kind calls its knowledge, or science, of Self and of Things, 
is assumed to be something more than mere self-referring, 
psychical occurrences,— mere presentations of sense, asso- 
ciated ideas, and subjectively connected thoughts. It is 
assumed to be the truth, either already attained or capable of 
being reached and verified. And by " truth " men generally 
understand a form of mental representation which has its 
correlate in reality, in the actual being and matter-of-fact 
performances of things. Yet doubt is constantly arising as 
to the meaning and as to the validity of this universal 
assumption. The doubt is productive of restless endeavor, as 
well as of sadness, increased doubt, and even of indifference 
and disgust, when the assumption itself is made the subject 
of inquiry. It is somehow thus that the problem of knowl- 
edge has progressively defined and emphasized itself as an 
influential factor in the development of the reflective thinking 
of man. The problem is by no means new, as the history 
of this thinking conclusively shows. 

It is to the increasingly keen and searching analysis of 
mental processes, to the science of psychology, and to the 
critical examination of reason — first undertaken in a thor- 
ough and methodical way by Kant — that we must resort 
for the more definite, technically exact statement of our 
problem. Now psychology, as its very nature and lcgiti- 



THE PROBLEM 5 

mate mission compel it, considers all cognitions, whether of 
the ordinary or of the so-called scientific variety, as merely 
mental (or subjective) phenomena. For it, all beings are 
resolvable into states of consciousness. Its definition is, 
" The science of states of consciousness, as such." And as 
its means for analyzing the content of consciousness become 
improved and are more faithfully and skilfully applied, and 
as the laws of the combination and succession of the dif- 
ferent states of consciousness are brought to light, the entire 
domain of knowledge is made the subject of its investigations. 
All cognitions, all sciences, undoubtedly are states of con- 
sciousness ; from the psychological point of view, they are 
simply this. The one psychological assumption, from which 
no escape is possible, the assumption which is presupposi- 
tionless and absolutely undeniable, is this : My cognition is 
a process in my consciousness. But this assumption is as true 
for you, and for him (for "the other," whoever he may be), 
as it is for me. It is as true, when the object of cognition 
is a thing, a stone or a star or a microbe, as when the ob- 
ject of cognition is definitively recognized as my own state, 
whether in the form of a toothache or a thought about God. 
The ultimate psychic fact is simply : " I know." 

Further, all the researches of modern psychology tend to 
show that in those mysterious beginnings of psychic life, 
which are forever hidden from direct observation and from 
■recognitive memory, ideation and object existed as in a 
common root of consciousness. One may speak of these 
beginnings as the "original unity of our perceptive life," 
as the original "unity of apperception," or as one please. 
Nothing more impresses students of Kant than his elaborate 
architectonic in exhibition of the complicated nature of that 
mental edifice, ascribed in part to imagination and in part 
to intellect, which the unity of apperception constructs. But 
those who dissent from the Kantian method and its conclu- 
sions, and will hear nothing of "psychic synthesis," even 



6 THE PROBLEM 

as a conscious and self-active energy, are compelled either 
to resort to the hypothesis of sensations that somehow get 
together or put themselves together ; or else they have alto- 
gether to abandon the problem of psychic unity of any kind. 

What all are aware of, however, whether psychologists or 
not, and independently of learned or thoughtless talk about 
"synthesis" and "apperception," is a most startling experi- 
ence of an opposite kind. It has already been said that the 
one indisputable fact upon which epistemological doctrine 
must build is the "I know" of every man's consciousness. 
This fact, when repeated and generalized, becomes the foun- 
dation of the most presuppositionless of all psychological 
truths, — " all cognition is a process in consciousness. " But 
on the very first experience of this fact, and in connection 
with all experiences of this truth, knowledge appears no 
longer as a one-sided affair. It appears rather as an affair 
of Subject and Object ; and, in the greater number of its 
most impressive instances, it becomes an affair implying a 
fundamental and unalterable distinction between Self and 
Things. 

The general fact of cognition requires restatement, then, 
in the following way. It is still, undoubtedly, a state of 
consciousness ; or rather, it is a conscious process. It is also 
a state of my consciousness, a conscious process which — 
including, as it must, its object-thing — I attribute to myself 
as subject, and call my own. But this object, which is my 
object-consciousness, my state objectively described, is cog- 
nized as not-me, as " out of " me. Objectivity, in the sense 
of imws-subjectivity, the really existent out of my conscious 
state, is, then, as will be shown in detail elsewhere, the 
implicate of every truly cognitive act of mine. The 
inquiries, how this can be, and what is implied as to a 
reality that is trans-subjective, constitute the problem of the 
philosophy of knowledge. The descriptive science of psy- 
chology, in its study of the plain man's consciousness, shows 



THE PROBLEM 7 

beyond all doubt that knowledge, even as admitted fact and 
state of consciousness, cannot be faithfully described, on 
the basis of a full and satisfactory analysis, without recog- 
nition of this implicate of what is not a present fact and 
state of consciousness. Thus much, at the very least, must 
be insisted upon. For the time being let those think, who 
so think can, that knowledge is explicable without recog- 
nition of the reality both of the object and of the subject, 
as a self-active and self-conscious synthesis, a unifying 
life-force. 

It appears, then, that the subjective and the formal lies, 
in the process of cognition, actually inseparable as an expe- 
rience from the trans-subjective and the real. The two ex- 
ist, as it were, side by side and in a living unity; and yet 
the two are not incapable of being distinguished both by 
immediate introspection and by reflective thinking. For 
cognition is a modification of consciousness that is depen- 
dent, in part, for its existence and for its particular form, 
upon reality outside of consciousness (upon not-my-con- 
sciousness). On the one hand, it cannot be, or even be 
conceived of, other than as a modification of consciousness. 
It must be explained as dependent, both for its existence and 
for its form, upon the fact and the laws of the cognizing 
subject. On the other hand, its existence implies, and its 
form requires for explanation, some other being than that 
which is present in the modified consciousness. As to 
the further analysis and explanation, the import, and the 
validating of the import, of all this, the philosophical theory 
of knowledge inquires. 

The problem of knowledge is not, however, grasped in its 
entirety and handled in a manner to promise a solution 
which is either theoretically satisfying or practically help- 
ful, until it is seen that both problem and solution lie 
embedded, so to speak, in the very heart of reason itself. 
It was the distinctive merit of Kant, as has already been 



8 THE PROBLEM 

implied, to make this truth clear as it had never been made 
clear before. Since his day, the theory of knowledge 
(Epistemology or Noetics, sometimes so called) has been 
one of the most active and fruitful branches of philosophical 
discipline. Indeed, some have gone so far as to make the 
formation of a theory of knowledge coincident with the 
entire function of philosophy. That which calls itself 
knowledge of the universe "we call self-knowledge," says 
Kuno Fischer. 1 We cannot agree to this restriction in the 
definition of the sphere of philosophy. And how widely the 
method we shall follow, and the results at which we shall 
arrive, differ from the method and conclusions of the 
immortal thinker of Konigsberg, should appear at the end 
rather than at the beginning of our task. But when Kant 
asserted, "Human reason has this peculiar fate, that, with 
reference to one species of its cognition, it is always burdened 
with questions which it cannot cast aside; for they are given 
to it by the very nature of reason itself, but they cannot be 
answered because they transcend the powers of reason," 2 he 
indicated beyond question for all time the sources of the 
epistemological problem. 

The history of reflective thinking, and indeed of the 
literature which either embodies, or is tinged by, the results 
of reflective thinking, has during the last century shown 
that Kant did not fully realize the success which he claimed 
for his critical philosophy. By following "the secure pro- 
cess of science," in his "elaboration of the cognitions which 
belong to the concern of reason," he expected, on the one 
hand, forever "to deprive speculative reason of its preten- 
sions to transcendent insights," and, on the other hand, "to 
furnish the needed preliminary preparation in furtherance of 



1 " Philosophic ist die Wissenschaft und Kritik der Erkenntniss," says Riehl, — 
Der Philosophische Kriticismus, iii. p. 15. 

2 Opening sentence of the Preface to the first edition of the Kritik der reinen 
Vernunft. 



THE PROBLEM y 

a fundamental metaphysics in scientific form. " 1 But, strange 
to say, Kant's destructive effort was followed in history by 
the erection of systems of metaphysics which made, above 
all others since man began to think, the most enormous 
"pretensions to transcendent insights;" while his positive 
intent has left behind few traces of accepted metaphysical 
science. It is the sceptical and agnostic conclusions as to 
the cognitions of reason which so-called neo-Kantians 
accept. The determination and defence of the subjective 
origin and the objective reference of the "categories," and 
the rationalized faith of Kant in the postulates of the 
practical reason are accepted, when accepted at all, by quite 
other schools of thinkers than those commonly called by his 
name. 

It is not the chief interest at present, however, to define 
epistemological truth with reference to the author of the 
modern critical doctrine of knowledge. It is rather the 
purpose to point out that the origin, nature, and importance 
of that problem which knowledge, with its essential objec- 
tive implicates, offers to the knowing subject, have in some 
sort been settled once for all by the critical work of Kant. 
The human mind, by virtue of its necessary and constitu- 
tional way of functioning in all its cognitive acts, contains 
at once the proposal and the answer, if answer there be, to 
the problem. Neither the biological and anthropological, 
nor even the distinctively psychological study of the nature 
and growth of man's mind will avail fully to explicate or to 
answer the epistemological inquiry. The rather is this, 
fundamentally considered, a philosophical problem. And 
it is inextricably intermingled with the prob]em of the 
Nature of Reality, as this conception of reality is ap- 
plied both to the mind of man and to the object of his 
knowledge. 

It will appear as an opinion for which we shall constantly 

1 Preface to the second edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 



10 THE PROBLEM 

contend that the problem of knowledge cannot be properly 
stated, much less satisfactorily discussed, without unceas- 
ing reference to the conclusions of a scientific psychology. 
The reference must even be a deference. The point of start- 
ing must be psychological. Epistemological discussion 
must begin by understanding analytically the actual, con- 
crete content of consciousness. But the consciousness which 
enfolds the problem, and which must be analyzed, and so 
far as possible understood in order to the best mastery of the 
problem, is a developed human consciousness. It is the 
consciousness of a being who has already become appercep- 
tive and self-conscious. It is not, therefore, an animal 
consciousness; nor is it an inchoate and beginning human 
consciousness. The study of the psychological origin and 
growth of knowledge is, indeed, a valuable contribution 
toward apprehending and solving the philosophical problem 
which gives rise to a theory of knowledge. But inasmuch 
as this problem is given in processes of cognition whose 
essential characteristic is that the knowing subject already 
distinguishes the forms of his cognition from the forms of 
existence implicate in cognition, and either naively identi- 
fies the two or raises the sceptical question about their iden- 
tification, psychological study is not in itself a sufficient 
indication or instrument for its solution. The more dis- 
tinctively epistemological problem now emerges; the criti- 
cal inquiry is raised as to whether, and how far, the forms 
of cognition coincide with the forms of existence. 

The fundamental problem of the philosophy of knowledge 
is, then, an inquiry into the relations between certain states 
of consciousness and what we conceive of as "the really 
existent. " 1 But at this point a reflective study of human 
knowledge reveals the fact that its problem is already inex- 
tricably interwoven with the ontological problem, — the meta- 
physical inquiry, in the more restricted meaning of the 

1 Compare Hartmann, Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnisstheorie, p. v. 



THE PROBLEM 11 

much-abused word "metaphysics." 1 For suppose that the 
two spheres be distinguished as follows: Epistemology, or 
the philosophy of knowledge, deals with the concept of the 
True; and Metaphysics, or the philosophy of being, deals 
with the concept of the Real. We find ourselves, however, 
quite unable to form any concept, or even to hold in con- 
sciousness the most shadowy mental picture, of what men 
affirm, with genuine conviction, to be true, without impli- 
cating the for-us-real in this concept, this mental image. 
On the other hand, no meaning can be given to the word 
"real " without stating a judgment as to what is considered 
true. Yet the two words are by no means precisely identi- 
cal. For the more correct usage speaks of presentations of 
sense, of images of recognitive memory, and of certified 
thoughts about things, as true; and they are thus distin- 
guished from images of fancy or from unverifiable thoughts. 
But men speak of minds and things as real — meaning thus 
to imply a sort of existence which belongs neither to the 
true nor to the false mental representations. 

We have already (in the Preface) stated that we intend to 
discuss separately the epistemological and the ontological 
problems. About the order and the method of these two dis- 
cussions something will be said later on. The connection of 
the two — intimate and inextricable as it is — is emphasized 
at this point in order to show that the impulse to the quest, 
which it is proposed in subsequent chapters to follow, is 
indeed set fast in the very heart of human reason. To 
explicate the problem of knowledge, it is necessary to search 
to its depths the mind of man. To solve it completely 
would be to comprehend and expose all the profoundest 
mysteries of his mind. And not only this : it would be, as 
Kant held, to prepare the way for a systematic and defen- 
sible exposition of the inmost nature of Reality, so far 

1 Note the phrase of Riehl, — die metaphysischen Erkenntnissprobleme. See 
Der Philosophische Kriticismus, Vorwort to Part ii. 



12 THE PROBLEM 

as this knowledge comes within the possible grasp of our 
reason itself. But, doubtless, this will remain for a long 
time to come one of the most alluring and important, yet 
difficult tasks of philosophical discipline. And one thinker 
can scarcely hope to do more than bear a small portion of 
the burden of so great a task. There will probably not 
arise another Copernicus in this stellar science of mind. 

Something more should at this point receive at least a 
passing notice. It would not be surprising if a critical 
inquiry into the nature, extent, and validity of knowledge 
should bring us, at various points along its course, in sight 
of, if not into closest contact with, certain important con- 
cepts of ethics and of the philosophy of religion. It will be 
the declared purpose and fixed rule of the prese'nt investiga- 
tion to avoid contested ethical and religious questions as 
much as is consistent with a thorough treatment of the 
epistemological problem. And where foresight makes con- 
tact inevitable, we shall still try to accomplish our task 
without undue influence from ethical and religious preju- 
dices. But it should be remembered that, in the discussion 
of all the problems of philosophy, and perhaps in the discus- 
sion of the epistemological problem in particular (since 
over it the forces of dogmatism and agnosticism, of extreme 
idealism and extreme realism, of crude evolutionism and 
old-fashioned theology, come to a sort of life-and-death 
struggle), prejudices are not likely to be all on one side. 
No author can promise more than we are ready to promise, 
— namely, to do the best that in him lies. And if it should 
be discovered that knowledge cannot be divorced from faith 
or separated from the life of action (from conduct, which is 
the sphere of ethics), why ! whose fault will it be that this 
is so ? Will not the discovery serve to make the unity of 
man's total life, and its oneness, in some sort, with the 
Reality of the Universe, yet more undoubted and more 
comprehensive ? 



THE PROBLEM 13 

The nature and extent of the epistemological problem, 
the discussion of which is a philosophy of knowledge, can be 
better comprehended only by emphasizing certain considera- 
tions somewhat more in detail. And first of all the follow- 
ing consideration: this problem is the most primary and 
fundamental, in the sense that it is of all philosophical 
problems the most free from the influence of necessary pre- 
liminary assumptions. To argue it is as near as the human 
mind can come to presuppositionless reflective thinking. 
This is, in part, but in part only, what Fichte meant by 
calling his critical examination of the primary and perma- 
nent content of consciousness a Wissenschaftslehre. For the 
same reason this kind of philosophical study is sometimes 
said to aim at a "science of science." All the particular 
sciences necessarily and fitly cherish their own particular 
assumptions. They cannot be successfully pursued, or even 
seriously approached, without taking for granted many 
important principles and not a few fundamental entities. 
Some of these principles and entities are assumptions of the 
most ordinary human knowledge ; others are presuppositions 
which have been won for the modern student by the re- 
searches of the past along different scientific lines. For 
example, chemistry adopts the work-a-day assumption of an 
extra-mentally existent matter, which is capable of actual 
subdivision into parts that are too minute to affect the 
senses, and that can therefore never have their existence 
verified by immediate testimony from sensuous observation. 
It also assumes the entity called an " atom, " with its mar- 
vellous non-sensuous characteristics and its faithful obe- 
dience to the law of equivalents. In common with all the 
physical sciences it assumes the capacity of the human mind 
to arrive at the truth of things, to bring its forms of mental 
representation into agreement with the forms of the actually 
existent. All the particular sciences presuppose, as truths 
which enable them to be "particular," the extra-mental 



14 THE PROBLEM 

validity of the so-called categories of time, space, relation, 
causation, etc. 

Those branches of philosophical discipline which are 
called metaphysics of ethics, philosophy of art, of nature, 
and of religion, as well as of rights and of history, have a 
complicated net-work of presuppositions, which is the very 
substance of what holds them within their proper bounds. 
The actuality of the existence of multitudes of men, in the 
present and through the past, with a real history of develop- 
ment, and standing in a great variety of actual relations to 
nature and to one another, is taken for granted in the very 
attempt to establish a philosophy of conduct; while any- 
thing approaching a philosophy of nature receives from the 
hands of the natural sciences a vast body of alleged, and not 
a few (we venture to suspect) of only conjectured, principles 
and entities, which become the necessary presuppositions of 
its constructive effort. 

But with the philosophy of knowledge the case is not the 
same. It at once and distinctly puts all the above-mentioned 
assumptions to one side. They may be true, but they can- 
not be adopted from the beginning by a critical theory of 
knowledge. The very aim of this theory is to get behind and 
underneath all these and other similar assumptions. And if 
there are assumptions back of which the mind cannot go, 

— because it is compelled to make them by the very consti- 
tution of its own most sceptical and critical life, as it were, 

— then epistemological inquiry will get down to these 
assumptions also and view them face to face, in calmness 
and with purified and sharpened vision. For it is not the 
nature and validity, or the value, of this or that class of 
cognitions with which the philosophical theory of knowledge 
aims to deal, — it is the cognitive faculty itself; or, to state 
the problem in more abstract and objective fashion, it is 
human cognition itself which is the subject of critical 
examination in every attempt at an epistemology. This 



THE PROBLEM 15 

inquiry is, therefore, the most nearly presuppositionless of 
all possible inquiries. It assumes nothing but the one 
general fact in which all individual cognitions, whether so- 
called scientific or not, "live and move and have their 
being," — the one fact, I know. 

It soon appears, however, as analysis and reflective study 
of the fact of knowledge moves forward and downward, that 
this fact is itself no simple affair. By this we mean some- 
thing more than that " our experience is an extremely com- 
plicated web of sensations and intellectual elaboration of 
sensations, and of the results of their elaboration." Locke 
would have had little doubt to throw upon a statement like 
this ; and even less doubt would have proceeded out of the 
mouth of the great sceptic Hume. The successors of Locke 
in France, the most extreme of sensationalists in the psychol- 
ogy of to-day, might admit as much. Modern psychological 
analysis, especially of the experimental type, in its effort to 
disentangle the " web " of experience, has thus far succeeded 
in increasing rather than diminishing its apparent com- 
plexity. Even the most presuppositionless of all inquiries, 
then, since it must assume the fact of knowledge, has also 
to assume a history of the complication of sensations, of the 
intellectual elaboration of sensations, and of the gathering 
of the results of their elaboration. That is to say, in the ' 
very reception of the datum, "I know," the assumption of 
an organization of experience has already, of necessity, been 
made. Nor is it possible to get back of this process of 
organization, with its complex results, in order, freed from 
its influences, to examine the fact of knowledge. 

So obvious is the truth to which attention has just been 
called that its statement is often made in half-jocose form. 
When I most carefully and critically examine this datum, 
"I know," and when I push my presuppositionless and 
sceptical inquiry to its extremest limits, what is all this 
but a going-round in an endless circle? I know; and I 



16 THE PROBLEM 

propose, without favorable or unfavorable prejudice, to dis- 
tinguish the ultimate nature, to get the full import, and to 
estimate the real value of this fact. But the conduct of the 
examination is itself, at best, only a series of similar facts : 
"I know," and again, "I know," or it may be, "I do not 
know." But this last, "I do not know," is only another 
way of saying Iknow, — at least, something, namely, that I 
do not know. At its best, too, the result of critical exami- 
nation is itself a cognition, which lies still further from the 
certitude of envisagement or of the concrete judgments of 
daily experience. At its worst, the same examination ends 
in a series of opinions, which are far enough from laying 
claim to be any kind of knowledge. 

Put into more serious philosophical form, the dilemma 
may be stated in something like the following way. A fun- 
damental critique of the faculty of cognition is now proposed ; 
but if this critique is really to be fundamental, it must be free 
from all the assumptions which belong to any of the special 
systems of cognitions, the sciences so-called. Theory of 
knowledge aims to be presuppositionless, to have no assump- 
tions beyond the one primary datum of my knowledge. 
In studying the data of actual cognitions, however, so as thus 
to frame a critique of the faculty of cognition which shall 
be based upon the facts, I am always using this same faculty. 
Hegel thus accused Kant of allowing to creep in " the mis- 
conception of already knowing before you know, — the error 
of refusing to enter the water until you have learned to swim. " 
And Lotze compares those who spend their strength upon a 
theory of knowledge to men constantly whetting the knife, 
and feeling its edge to see if it will cut; or to an orchestra 
which is forever tuning its instruments and still wondering 
if they can play in tune. 

To objectors in general, we shall either propose our 
answer in due time, or else conclude that a much needed 
work will be better done if they are silently passed by. 



THE PROBLEM 17 

Two things are enough to say at present. Of these the first 
is this: if the critical theory of knowledge must be satisfied 
with a completely sceptical or agnostic outcome, then all 
human science is but consistent dreaming, at its best. For 
the very guarantee of truth which consistency gives is itself 
dependent upon trust in the constitution of reason. But, 
second, the absurdity of an utterly presuppositionless cri- 
tique of reason must be acknowledged at the very beginning 
of every epistemological inquiry. All reflective thinking 
upon this class of problems must be content to move within 
the inevitable circle. The human mind cannot contemplate 
itself from an outside point of view, as it were. It must 
accept at its own hands the terms upon which it will under- 
take and complete its task of self-understanding. 

Here, then, we get the first strong intimation of charac- 
teristic difficulties besetting the path which must necessarily 
be followed in the attempt to investigate with critical thor- 
oughness the philosophical problem of knowledge. Nothing, 
we assure ourselves with encouraging confidence, must be 
taken for granted, beyond the ultimate and indisputable datum 
of all science, — the fact, above or behind or beneath which 
no one can go. This is the datum and the fact of knowledge 
itself. But surely this datum must be received as being all 
that it in fact is; this fact must be held for all that it, as 
conscious datum, is worth. This is to say that a philo- 
sophical theory of knowledge must deal with the whole 
circumference, as it were, and with the most intimate and 
inclusive significance, of the psychological process of cogni- 
tion. Criticism must accejrt, as its prohlem^ cognition includ- 
ing all its necessary implicates. What is it to know, in 
respect of all that knowledge is, of all that knowledge guar- 
antees, and of all that it necessarily implicates ? It is in 
the primary fact of cognition, when critically regarded, that 
we find the sources of the possible forms of conclusion con- 
cerning the true philosophical theory of knowledge. The 

2 



18 THE PROBLEM 

permanent sources of philosophical scepticism and agnosti- 
cism exist in the incontestable fact that all knowledge is 
subjective; that, proximately considered, it is a conscious 
process in time, a mental state which arises and then passes 
away. Moreover, one of the first discoveries which criti- 
cism makes is the truth, also incontestable, that the laws 
of the knowing faculty, and so the limits of knowledge, are 
firmly set in the constitution and characteristic development 
of the cognitive subject. Human cognition, therefore, con- 
tains in its own nature a standing warning, and even a vin- 
dication of the necessity for doubt of the most fundamental 
sort. It issues a perpetual call to those self-searchings 
which lead into a theoretical reconstruction of our concept 
of knowledge. 

Equally certain is it, however, that the sources from 
which must come the healing of the wounds which reason 
receives at her own hands are with reason herself. The 
primary datum of cognition contains within itself the cor- 
rective of agnosticism, the chastening of raw and unbridled 
scepticism ; or else no such corrective and no such chasten- 
ing are anywhere to be found. The sources of a philosophy 
of knowledge and of a trustworthy metaphysics also exist, 
inexhaustible, in the incontestable fact that knowledge is 
trans-subjective, and, in its very nature, implicates existence 
beyond the process of knowledge; that cognition itself guar- 
antees the extra-mental being of that which, by the very 
nature of this process the cognitive subject is compelled 
to recognize as not identical with its own present state. 
Thus the most primary problem of epistemology becomes a 
concern of reason with the ultimate, the unanalyzable and 
irreducible momenta and principles of objective cognition. 1 
The further advance of this concernment may be described 
as reason becoming more self-conscious in the way of bring- 
ing to its own recognition what is implicate in conscious- 
ness as objective. 

1 Compare Volkelt, Erfahrung und Denken, p. 35. 



THE PROBLEM 19 

Mere recognition of the implicates of cognition is not in 
itself, however, enough to satisfy all the demands made 
by the self-searching and critical activity of man's mind. 
These implicates must themselves be made the matter of a 
further concern of reason. Suppose, for example, that I 
have come to a consciousness of what is involved in saying, 
" I know " — any simplest truth of fact or of a physical law ; 
such as that the chair is over yonder, or that the force of 
gravity varies inversely as the square of the distance and 
directly as the mass of the two bodies taking part in that 
transaction which reveals the existence of this force. Here, 
as in every act of knowledge, are two classes of implicates. 
One of these is the implied control of consciousness by 
what are called the "laws of the mind." It is an invin- 
cible persuasion, belief — use what word you will, if you 
do not like the term "rational assumption" — of all men 
that truth is somehow to be attained by the mind. This 
is the indestructible self-confidence of human reason. Dis- 
appoint her as often as you may, deceive her as badly as 
you can, accuse her of unlimited audacity in enterprises 
that concern what appears to transcend her powers, and 
yet you can never wholly destroy her self-confidence. So 
often as she falls, she rises again and makes once more the 
persistent effort to stand and to walk alone. Or in her more 
pious moods, if much chastened by rebukes for her many 
errors, she still "trusts in God and is not confounded." 

This trust of reason in herself, which is always at least a 
silent and concealed postulate of all her distrust, itself needs 
critical investigation; in order, to drop the figure of speech, 
that the mental principles of those processes of knowledge 
which all involve the persuasion, or the conviction of knowl- 
edge, may themselves be criticised in detail. Certainly we 
shall not by the critical method escape the necessity of 
using and of trusting these principles; nor shall we succeed 
in establishing their claims in a more fundamental way by 



20 THE PROBLEM 

smart and consecutive dialectic and trains of argument. 
Something better than merely this, however, may be hoped 
for, which it is by all means necessary to attempt, and 
which is not without a certain large positive value. We 
may hope to bring to light the truer meaning of these forms 
of the constitution of mind, these ways of the functioning 
of all human reason. Moreover, since there is no little 
apparent conflict among these principles, as well as vague- 
ness and uncertainty respecting the best ways of stating each 
of them, we may attempt to effect something in the interests 
of harmony and clearness. The doctrine of irreconcilable 
conflict, of fundamental and irremovable " antinomies " of 
intellect so-called, is favorite with many acute students of 
the mental life. This doctrine, in itself so distasteful or 
even abhorrent and frightful to the higher interests of ethics 
and religion as some conceive it to be, certainly requires 
perpetual re-examination. To speak technically, the critical 
and " reconciling " discussion of the " categories " is an 
important problem for the student of epistemology. And 
when he is incontinently and even coarsely accused of foster- 
ing scepticism and agnosticism, of emasculating a sturdy 
and effective manhood by calling in question its most fun- 
damental faiths, he may answer : " Nay, not so ; for no faith 
can lay claim to be fundamental, or to contribute to a sturdy 
and effective manhood, which cannot submit itself to the 
freest criticism." 

To-day and throughout all history, the struggle of a posi- 
tive and critical philosophy with scepticism and agnosticism 
over a theory of knowledge is a life-and-death struggle. 
War to the knife is already declared between the two. He 
is the emasculator of reason, the effeminate student of the 
mind's life, who would deprive us of the power to answer 
ever anew the call : " Let the thinker arouse himself and 
respond to the demand to give reasons for the faith that is 
in him, by an effort at improved self-knowledge." But 



THE PROBLEM 21 

surely self-knowledge cannot be improved, or made true 
knowledge of Self, unless we look below the superficial area 
of particular cognitions and undertake to validate the prin- 
ciples of all cognition. Surely it is no less true now than it 
was in mediaeval times, when the principle of authority was 
wellnigh universal in its sway, that the friends of human 
reason are not those who refuse to have its claims examined. 
What higher principle of truth can there be than this: That 
must be true which is so connected with the knowing sub- 
ject that he must either relinquish all claim to any kind of 
knowledge or else assume the same to be true ? What is 
actually thus connected with the knowing subject can only 
appear as the result of a critical investigation into the fun- 
damental laws of the mental life in its acts of cognition. 
For the theory of hnoivledge must be a theory of certainty. 

But the process of thinking may conform, at least in cer- 
tain respects, to logical laws without putting the thinker in 
possession of material truth. Whether an agreement of the 
total activity of knowledge with all the formal laws of intel- 
lect would unfailingly guarantee the truth is a question which 
need not be raised at present. Certainly, neither what is 
called ordinary knowledge, nor what is called science, con- 
sists simply in weaving into a consistent totality a number 
of universal and necessary laws. A critical analysis will 
establish the conclusion that thinking alone — the pure dia- 
lectical process, mere thinking, if that were possible — can- 
not produce a certified experience of Reality or a sure convic- 
tion as to the essential and unchanging nature of Reality. 
This truth emphasizes the necessity of extending still further 
the problem of the epistemological branch of philosophy. 
Besides the formal laws of intellect, another class of impli- 
cates is found in every act of cognition, and furnishes a 
demand for more detailed examination. These are impli- 
cates of beings, of entities, of the really existent. The 
exercise of "metaphysical instinct," if we may for the 



22 THE PROBLEM 

moment employ such a term, is an indispensable form of 
functioning in every act of cognition. To know is to make 
an ontological leap, a spring from the charmed circle of 
pure subjectivity into the mystery of the real. This in- 
stinctive metaphysics maintains its inexorable rule over 
the human mind, in spite of all sceptical inquiry ; and just 
as inexorably after we have adopted the agnostic view 
regarding the validity of human knowledge, or the most 
extremely idealistic theory of the nature of experience, as 
before. But in its uncritical and instinctive form it is 
neither theoretically nor practically satisfying. There must 
be substituted for this uncritical metaphysics some postu- 
late, thoughtfully wrought out, which will show how the 
contents of developed and carefully guarded human con- 
sciousness may be true and valid representations of actual 
transactions in the world of reality. 

The detailed critical discussion of those conceptions which 
fall under the general concept of Reality constitutes the 
peculiar field of metaphysics proper. This field, in not a 
few places, overlays the field of epistemology. The path 
by which both fields are reached follows the same method, 
— beginning in psychological science and continuing by 
reflective thinking upon the problems which this science, 
as applied to the presuppositions of all the other sciences, 
brings to our view. Some adjustment of our examination 
into the problem of knowledge, so as to make it fit in with 
conclusions that belong to the problem of being, seems not 
only desirable but even indispensable. Otherwise the criti- 
cism of man's cognitive faculty must inevitably fall into one 
of two extremes. To assume, uncritically, that the forms of 
our conscious life — our representations of sense, our trains 
of associated ideas, and even our connected thoughts — 
necessarily correspond with the actual transactions of the 
real world, whether we make the assumption according to 
the plain man's " common-sense " or in the more elaborate 



THE PROBLEM 23 

forms of so-called "scientific realism," is to leave the prob- 
lem of knowledge unattempted at one of its most important 
and even vital points. 

On the other hand, agreement in some sort and to some 
extent between the forms of human consciousness and the 
real beings and actual transactions of the world outlying the 
individual's immediate experience, is an assumption from 
which we can never set free the critique of reason itself. 
Uncritical faith and dogmatic agnosticism are both unphilo- 
sophical. The actual condition of thought and things in 
every process of knowing, and the indications which the 
critical study of the process offers respecting the real rela- 
tions of thought and things, become then a problem for 
further examination. The apparent contradictions which 
the epistemological problem contains cannot contentedly be 
left in the uncriticised and unsettled position in which 
naive consciousness finds them. To leave them thus would 
be to confess that knowledge is no knowledge, and that our 
most essential activities are self -stultifying. 

But further pursuit of such considerations as the foregoing 
must be left to the attempted solution of the problems which 
a philosophy of knowledge propounds. Enough has been 
said to show how it is that epistemology undertakes, as its 
important and difficult task, to discover, to expound criti- 
cally, and to defend both circumstantially and by harmoniz- 
ing them with each other, the implicates of every act of 
knowledge. This is also its chief theoretical interest. 

The method which must be pursued in any partially suc- 
cessful attempt to form a philosophical theory of knowledge 
has already been indicated. A few words are needed, how- 
ever, to make this indication clearer. In the study of the 
epistemological problem, as in the study of all philosophical 
problems, psychology stands in the relation of a propaedeutic. 
It is this science alone which, when appealed to in faithful 
and unprejudiced fashion, can put us into possession of 



24 THE PROBLEM 

those concrete and indisputable facts of experience wherein 
the philosophical problem has its origin. The inquirer who 
is defective or slovenly in his analysis of psychological fact, 
of the concrete and feeling-full life of the human mind, will 
surely fail even to grasp the significance of the problem of 
knowledge. He certainly can never have in hand the data 
for helping to make more satisfactory the attempt at its 
answer. And the epistemology which despises or neglects 
the assistance of psychological science will either mistake 
the real nature of its mission, or else its entire view and 
attempted solution will be ghostly, — an unsubstantial image 
suspended in thin mid-air. The successful critic of human 
cognition must have penetrated and resided long within the 
theatre where the factors of the conscious and self-conscious 
life are enacting their varied drama upon the mind's stage. 
Nor will it suffice for this that he shall have merely 
studied the logic of the actor. For, as we shall see in de- 
tail subsequently, human knowledge is not merely a logical 
affair. 

His despite of psychology, as well as the forlorn condition 
of the science in his day, and his over-credulous acceptance 
of the logical schemata of Aristotle in the attempt to esti- 
mate the constitution, the presuppositions, and the limits 
of human cognition, had an evil influence upon even the 
"astounding Kant." It was chiefly the rigid maintenance 
of the purely conceptual points of view, the treatment of 
the categories, or forms of the functioning of judgment, as 
merely formal, which led irresistibly to the sceptical and 
agnostic outcome of the "Critique of Pure Reason." But 
Kant's abandonment of the merely formal points of view, 
in the other two Critiques, came too late to secure our re- 
spect and adherence for the class of objects with which these 
works attempt to deal. A more comprehensive and truer 
psychology would have shown the author that it is not a 
question of pure knowledge here and of pure faith over yon- 



THE PROBLEM 25 

der ; of objective cognition free from doubtful postulates in 
the case of sensuous objects, and of practical trust without 
intuitive data in the case of so-called transcendent objects. 
It would possibly have guarded this great philosopher — 
above ail others acute as a reflective analyzer of the formal 
presuppositions of reason — from claiming, in the interests 
of a harmonious apriorism, to have "knowledge " in so many 
places where no knowledge is; as well as from denying 
knowledge in certain other places where its claim to ex- 
istence may well enough be maintained. For surely the 
Kantian "ideas of pure reason" have as good title to 
objective validity as have many of the "concepts of pure 
understanding. " The real unity of the soul is, at worst, as 
much known as is the objective verity of the principle of 
causation in physics, or — to take another instance — of the 
principle of reciprocity. Certain judgments to which Kant 
gives a priori and objective authority, as "making a pure 
science of physics " possible, are no more entitled to this 
distinction than are many of the theological judgments 
which he relegates to the limbo of dead metaphysical 
speculations. 

We have dwelt upon the example of Kant in order to 
show that metaphysical acumen and power in reflective 
analysis, however surpassing, will not serve one to the best 
advantage in the study of the problem of knowledge, unless 
these qualities be employed upon a sound and broad basis 
of psychological fact. But, on the other hand, the mere 
student of psychology (especially of the purely experimental 
type) cannot grasp, much less satisfactorily solve, the diffi- 
culties inherent in a philosophical theory of knowledge. 
For the method of stating and of handling the epistemo- 
logical problem must be something more than descriptive 
and experimental. The peculiar discursive analysis which 
philosophy habitually employs must unfold the presupposi- 
tions that lie implicate in the facts of cognition. It must 



26 THE PKOBLEM 

also be persistently and systematically used in order to 
attain a consistent and harmonious theory. 

Upon one point affecting the method of epistemology a 
further word needs to be said. We have seen that the prob- 
lem of knowledge is in its very nature such as to involve 
metaphysical discussion in the narrower meaning of the word 
"metaphysics:" that is to say, it is impossible to discuss 
this problem without introducing the influence of one's posi- 
tions respecting the ultimate questions in ontology. Accord- 
ingly a dispute has for some time been rife over the inquiry, 
" Which of the two logically precedes the other in a philo- 
sophical system ? " The answer of Kant to this inquiry was 
not equivocal. He held that to attempt a system of meta- 
physics, or even to discuss any of the great metaphysical 
problems, previous to a critique of reason itself, was mis- 
chievous and absurd. On the other hand, not a few would 
agree with Paulsen 1 in recommending, or insisting upon, 
the opposite order. We have expressed our opinion as to 
the merits of the question of method elsewhere. 2 The his- 
torical order coincides with that which is advocated by those 
who oppose Kant upon this point. The logical order, on 
the contrary, is the one advocated so earnestly by Kant him- 
self. The two classes of problems, and the two branches 
of philosophical discipline which cultivate them, cannot be 
kept apart. When historically considered they will be, and 
when logically considered they cannot help being, cultivated 
in their relations of mutual dependence. But it does not 
follow, because the historical order favors the view of 
Paulsen, that the more logical order may not be entitled 
at some time in the development of reflective thinking 
to displace the historical. We can see no serious objec- 
tion to allowing any author to follow his own inclinations 
or convenience in arranging this point in the method of 

1 Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 340 f. 

2 See the author's Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 178 f. 



THE PROBLEM 27 

treatment given to the connected epistemological and onto- 
logical problems. 

As concerns the purpose and the method of this treatise, 
therefore, all that it is now necessary to say may be sum- 
marized as follows. We propose a philosophical criticism of 
knowledge, with a view to point oat its origin and nature as 
implicating reality; to validate it by reducing to their sim- 
plest terms and arranging in a harmonious whole its necessary 
forms, its assumptions, and its postulates; and to mark out 
its limits by further criticism and especially by distinguishing 
the sources and kinds of error and of half-truth. This is the 
task belonging to epistemology, or the theory of knowledge. 
We shall go for our facts to psychology, to the descriptive 
and explanatory science of those mental processes which are 
called "knowledge," and of that mental development which 
is called "growth of knowledge." We shall subject these 
facts to a thorough reflective analysis; and we shall use 
what speculative skill we can command to set our results 
into relation with sound conclusions on the other great 
problems of philosophy. 

To any who question the importance or doubt the benefit 
of such a study as that here proposed, a few words will 
suffice. There can be no doubt about the existence in culti- 
vated and thoughtful circles of a vast amount of scepticism 
which has led many minds either to a self-confident dogmatic 
agnosticism or to a pathetic despair of knowledge. These 
mental attitudes are, of course, especially obvious toward 
the transcendent objects which have always commanded the 
assent of the great majority of thinkers upon ethics and 
religion. But the agnostic or despairing attitude toward the 
problem of knowledge itself lies, both logically and in fact, 
at the base of all other agnosticism and of manifold forms 
of despair. The history of mental development shows that, 
in order to set free the forces of thinking for positive and 
fruitful activity, there is nothing against which we need 



28 THE PROBLEM 

to guard ourselves more carefully than the haste with which 
the most important and fundamental conceptions of the 
intellect are permitted to lose their absolute significance 
for the cognition of the being and the connections of the 
real world. Witness the cheap and easy-going fashion with 
which the sceptical and agnostic outcome of the Kantian 
critical system gets itself accepted on every side. And this 
oftenest comes about without serious effort to understand 
Kant aright; and with even less sympathy with the effort 
which led him to undertake the critique of reason, — the 
effort, namely, to save the ethical and religious postulates 
from the attacks of the speculative reason. 

For souls who take themselves seriously and who enter 
in earnest upon the exploration of reason, if they become 
tired, discouraged, or misled, there is no permanent cure 
but that which it lies in the hands of reason, with a pro- 
founder and richer understanding of her own self and her own 
resources, to accomplish. And they do not catch the true 
voice of the Zeitgeist who cannot hear and interpret it as a 
call. It is a call for a stronger and sweeter word of healing,' 
spoken in the name of reason to soothe the sufferings and re- 
move the scars which have been inflicted in her own name. 

Nor is this mental attitude and its accompanying tone of 
the emotional and practical life confined by any means to 
those who have reflected upon the criticism of the categories. 
There are thousands of plain men and women who do not 
so much as know whether there be any critical philosophy, 
and who have scarcely even heard the name of Kant, but 
who are profoundly influenced by the streams of think- 
ing of which that masterful mind is the principal modern 
philosophical source. They, too, are ready to join the 
complaint: — 

" There was the Door to which I found no key ; 
There was the Veil through which I could not see : 

Some little talk awhile of ME-and-THEE 
There was — and then no more of thee and me." 



THE PROBLEM 29 

And the chances, as the history of humanity abundantly 
shows, are not altogether against their coming soon to add 
to complaint this teaching of experience : — 

" Then to the lip of this poor earthen Urn 
I lean'd the Secret of my Life to learn : 

And lip to lip it murmur'd — ' While you live, 
Drink ! — for, once dead, you never shall return.' " 

Now we cannot believe that it is matter of small impor- 
tance whether or not any helpful word is spoken to those 
who are asking of reason a contribution to her own better 
self-understanding. And if, as has always happened, this 
word, when first spoken to more serious students, should 
filter downward and outward through the currents of popular 
opinion and popular impression, it might strengthen and 
sweeten the daily life of some of these "plain men and 
women." At any rate, here is a task worth trying. For 
the critical study of cognition is essentially an effort to 
make the total of our human life more dignified and better 
worth the living. It is an effort to heighten our rational 
estimate of the calling and the destiny of man. Scant 
respect is due that doctor in psychology who, when his 
patient comes to him heart-sick and brain-confused, either 
makes light of his ills or sends him to the nearest apothe- 
cary's shop, with orders to put himself to sleep by taking as 
much crude opium as some unskilled hand may choose to 
measure out for him. And, surely, that teacher of phi- 
losophy has either mistaken his mission, or else has no real 
mission to fulfil, who is not ready to welcome any honest 
and fairly competent attempt at so important a task. 



CHAPTER II 

HISTOEY OF OPINION 

r ~PO write a detailed history of the opinions of reflective 
-*• thinkers respecting the nature, origin, limits, and 
relations to reality, of human knowledge, would be to traverse 
the whole field of the more important philosophical litera- 
ture. But a far narrower and less arduous work is proposed 
for the sketch made in the two following chapters. The 
character of this sketch is to be understood and its value 
estimated only by keeping steadily in mind both the consid- 
erations which have chiefly influenced it. First, only those 
authors have been selected for brief review whose opinions 
have been found most suggestive and helpful in the histori- 
cal study of the epistemological problem. Second, among 
the opinions of these authors only such points of suggestion 
and helpfulness have been noted as, on the one hand, seem 
most distinctive of their particular authors, and, on the 
other hand, fit in best with our own method of study and 
with the conclusions to which it has led us. Selections 
and omissions alike must be regarded in the light of these 
considerations. 

" Antiquity, " says Windelband, 1 "did not attain a theory 
of investigation." This statement is true only if by "a 
theory of investigation " we mean to indicate such a concep- 
tion and treatment of the grounds of knowledge and of the 
method of attaining truth as prevail in their modern more 

1 A History of Philosophy (English Translation by Professor Tufts), p. 198. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 31 

precise and systematic form. But in Plato, and in many 
writers from Plato onward through antiquity, not a few nug- 
gets of most precious truth on the "elaboration of those 
cognitions which belong to the concern of reason " are found 
scattered. Kant was by no means the first to criticise 
acutely the " pretensions of reason to transcendent insights " ; 
neither was he the first who undertook to " make room for 
faith" by "removing knowledge." Even much more is 
true, for there are in ancient and mediaeval authors frequent 
suggestions of a correct theory, variously shaped and pro- 
pounded, which the modern student of the psychology and 
philosophy of cognition cannot wisely afford to overlook. 
Nor need one hesitate to affirm that in some cardinal par- 
ticulars the Church Fathers Origen and Augustine were 
nearer the final statement of facts, and showed more of 
verifiable speculative insight into the significance of the 
facts than Kant himself. Yet so distinctive was the con- 
ception which the latter held of the epistemological prob- 
lem, so relatively firm his grasp upon it in all its large 
roundness, and so unique the answer which he elaborated, 
that the entire history of human reflection upon this prob- 
lem fitly divides itself at the Kantian epoch. 

It is indispensable for the recognition and use of the sug- 
gestions which antiquity and even the Middle Ages afford, 
that the loose and figurative forms of expression employed 
by the writers of these periods should be pardoned and set 
aside. Modern thinking must gladly accept the truths they 
suggest, although the expression given to these truths may 
be much too fanciful to accord well with modern philo- 
sophical taste. Furthermore, the practical, the ethical, and 
the religious bearings of the problem and of the solution 
which happens to be suggested for it are seldom or never lost 
out of sight by these writers. A purely speculative interest 
in epistemology, or a rigidly technical presentation of its 
various possible answers must not be expected from them. 



32 HISTORY OF OPINION 

But in this respect, too, it is far from being certain that 
the modern philosophy of knowledge has not something valu- 
able to learn from its earlier and vaguer forms. 

It is the Platonic Socrates and Plato — for we do not care 
to distinguish the two ■ — who first has something interesting 
to say to us respecting the origin, the nature, and the vali- 
dating of knowledge. In Socrates' rude midwifery and in 
the polished dialectic of Plato attempts are not wanting to 
criticise man's cognitive faculty and its product of so-called 
knowledge. Nor is the conception of a theory of knowledge, 
a science of science, unknown to Plato. There are hints at 
this conception in the distinction between the "what" of 
knowledge and the " that " of knowledge (between a olSev and 
ore olBev). The question as to the possibility of such a 
science is raised in the " Charmides " ; and again in the 
" Thesetetus, " under form of the inquiry, "What is knowl- 
edge ? " And although the notion of an absolutely self- 
determined knowledge is disputed by Socrates, it is concluded 
that, if a science of science can be found, it will also be 
"the science of the absence of science." 1 The critique of 
cognitive faculty., that is to say, will give us the absolute 
criteria of truth and of error in general. This science of 
science is not identical with self-knowledge ; for the former 
determines that, "of two things, one is, and the other is 
not, science or knowledge." Neither is it identical with 
wisdom; for such a science is not the cure of folly, although 
it is the cure of the scepticism and agnosticism which are 
the breeders of folly. 2 

The problem of the origin of knowledge was a puzzling 
one to Plato, as it has always been to all who have made it 
the subject of reflection. For to give the descriptive history 
of how the different concrete and actual cognitions arise in 
consciousness did not seem to him a sufficient explanation 
of their arising at all, or of the universal forms under which 

i Charmides, 166. 2 Ibid. 172. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 33 

they arose. Such history might explain what I know, why 
I know this rather than that ; but it could not explain, he 
thinks, that I know rather than have an opinion or a thought, 
and that this knowledge is an implied seizure of reality. 
Herein lies the mystery of knowledge. This recognized 
certainty of present reality appears to Plato as implying 
some sort of commerce with the invisible world of the ideal. 
How otherwise can that which is universal, necessary, and 
eternal be given to every man in the concrete, varied, and 
fleeting experiences of his earthly life ? In the "Meno," for 
example, the difficulty of defining virtue leads to the con- 
viction of the truth : " Nature is of one kindred ; and every 
soul has a seed or germ which may be developed into all 
knowledge." Even Meno's slaves recognize some elementary 
relations of all the geometrical figures. But though the 
simple sensations which reach the soul through the body are 
given by nature, at birth, to men and to animals, reflections 
on the being and use of the sensations are gained slowly 
and with difficulty, if they are ever gained at all, by educa- 
tion and by experience. But how can education and expe- 
rience account for all that is in every man's knowledge ? 
It must be that cognition, somehow, is prior to particular 
cognitions. As to the manner of this pre-existence of the 
universal and necessary element of cognition, Jowett, misled 
by Plato's figurative use of words, commits him to the 
modern evolutionary hypothesis that it "exists, not in the 
previous state of the individual, but of the race." The 
rather have we here, though only dimly apprehended, the 
thought that the origin of knowledge cannot be understood 
merely empirically, but must be found in the native consti- 
tution of the cognitive soul. 1 How did it get there? Here 
Plato's characteristic figurative ontology must account for 
the fallacy in his argument. Socrates is made to say: 
"But if he did not acquire the knowledge in this life, he 

1 Compare Thesetetus, 186 ; Meno, 86; Phsedo, 73. 
3 



34 HISTORY OF OPINION 

must have had and learned it at some other time." And 
again, Cebes, referring to Socrates, remarks : " Your favorite 
doctrine that knowledge is recollection." Thus the pre- 
existence and immortality of the cognitive soul is made to 
stand or fall with the ontological doctrine of the ideal 
world. For "if the ideas of men are eternal, their souls 
are eternal ; and if not the ideas, then not the souls. " 1 

The impossibility of giving a wholly empirical account of 
the origin of cognition, and the necessity of recognizing 
elements that for their explanation demand an appeal to the 
reality and eternal existence of the ideal, are tenets in the 
Platonic doctrine of knowledge. These same tenets are 
repeatedly affirmed in the treatment given to the essential 
nature of knowledge; for truth cannot be imparted by the 
best of the senses, not even by sight and hearing. The 
disparagement of sensuous cognition is common to Plato 
with most idealists ; and this mistaken view is connected 
with the failure — which he shares in common with modern 
solipsism — to recognize that both thought and the mental 
leap to reality are involved in all perception. And so he 
distinguishes knowledge from opinion, which is interme- 
diate hetween ignorance and knowledge, even asserting that 
the two have to do with different kinds of matter corre- 
sponding to different faculties, 2 and from belief, which 
may be false, while there can be no false knowledge; and 
he endeavors to refute the view that perception of things 
is knowledge at all. 3 Here the Hindu mysticism, which 
regarded the soul as addressing itself in every act of per- 
ception of a Thing with a " That-too-art-thou, " came far 
nearer the truth than did the Greek idealism. But with 
Plato it is thought by which existence must be revealed to 
the soul, if at all. 4 Dialectic is the true method of rational 
knowledge. Upon this point Plato comes nearest to the 

1 Plifledo, 76. 2 Republic, 477. 

8 Theoetetus, 152 f. 4 Phado, 65. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 35 

truth in the statement that knowledge is true opinion accom- 
panied by a reason, or resting on a ground. 1 It is this over- 
estimate of dialectic as the deliverer of knowledge within 
the soul of man, which is the chief error of Plato and of 
all similar forms of idealism since Plato until the present 
hour. 

On one other phase of the problem of knowledge the 
Platonic writings are worthy to instruct the student of the 
epistemological problem to the end of time. Throughout 
does Plato emphasize the dependence of knowledge on desire, 
aspiration, virtue, and character. " In the ' Phsedrus, ' " says 
Jowett, "love and philosophy join hands." With the excep- 
tion of some of the writers of the Christian Church we have 
to wait until Fichte to have the inseparable and vital union 
of cognition with the life of feeling and action so emphati- 
cally affirmed. "The true knowledge of things in heaven 
and earth is based upon enthusiasm, or love of the ideas 
going before us and ever present to us in this world and in 
another." Only through the exercise of this love can that 
divine knowledge be attained which is "knowledge absolute 
in existence absolute. " Hence the firm connection between 
knowledge and the teleology of the idea of the good; 2 for, 
indeed, the idea of the good is the cause of science, and 
virtue is identical with knowledge. 3 In a word, it is the 
distinguishing feature of Plato's doctrine of cognition that 
he treats knowledge, not as "pure," but as the epistemolog- 
ical and metaphysical presupposition of ethics. 

It is the merit of Aristotle to have brought the early 
attempts at a science of knowledge into much more definite 
and systematic shape — especially in his works on Logic and 
Metaphysics. On the possibility of such a science we find 
with him no such expressions of doubt, approaching despair, 
as are found in Plato; also no such merely tentative and 

1 Theaetetus, 206 f. 2 Compare Republic, 508. 

3 To show which, is the aim of the " Protagoras." 



36 HISTORY OF OPINION" 

mystical treatment of his problem. Aristotle distinctly 
recognizes the truth that, since there are certain principles 
common to all the particular sciences, and since, although 
these principles depend upon one another, the process of 
regressive dependence cannot go on forever, therefore there 
are premises which are themselves undemonstrable, but 
from which all demonstration begins. 1 His view of the 
criteria of cognition seems to have been in part derived from 
his criticism of the doctrine of Protagoras {irav to (^atvo^evov 
akrjdes). In spite of Grote's assertion that Aristotle dis- 
countenances altogether the doctrine which represents the 
mind, or intellect, as "a source of first or universal truths 
peculiar to itself, " the doctrine of the Greek thinker amounts 
to an espousal of a certain form of apriorism in respect of 
the sources and nature of human cognition. 2 

Knowledge, according to Aristotle, has its origin both in 
dialectical induction and logical demonstration. The soul, 
in its thinking nature, possesses the possibility of all knowl- 
edge (all knowledge dynamically) ; but it actually attains to 
its knowledge only by degrees. 3 His doctrine of the syllo- 
gism leads him to conclude that there are two kinds of ulti- 
mate presuppositions : these are (1) the actual fact as known 
to us in perception without proof, and (2) general principles 
whose source is in reason (z>o0?), — the power of direct, 
intuitive, and therefore unerring knowledge of such prin- 
ciples. Here we have a hint at the different kinds of impli- 
cates which have already been discovered as given in the 
fact "I know." And although in his psychology Aristotle 
regards the mind as in some sort a tabula rasa, thought takes 
the main part in writing some definite object upon the 

1 See Anal. Post. p. 100, b. 3. 

2 This we should argue, not simply on the basis of an appeal to passages in 
which Aristotle appears as the champion of " common-sense " (such as Eth. 
Nikom. I., vii., 14, and Eth. Eud. V., vi. f.), but chiefly as having his general doc- 
trine of the nature and growth of knowledge in mind. 

a Anal. Post, p. 71, b. 33; Phys. i., p. 184, a. 16. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 37 

tablet. 1 By " thought " is meant, not a merely sensuous per- 
ception, although in perception thought is always accom- 
panied by sensuous images {^avrda^ara)', but the intuition 
of that which is rational (the vonrd) is a necessary part of 
the knowledge even of things. For it is not in reason (1/0O9) 
as merely passive (waOnTi/co?), but also as creative {ttol^tlko^ 
that knowledge has its source. And there is an activity of 
the reason as such (" pure "), which consists in the imme- 
diate grasping of the highest truths. For knowledge becomes 
possible only as reason creates, into rational form, the object 
of knoivledge. 

Further as to Aristotle's view of the nature of knowledge 
we learn by following his description of the laws and manner 
of its growth. The mind rises, he thinks, by successive steps 
from individual observations to perception, from perception, 
by means of memory, to experience, and from such expe- 
rience to the truer knowledge. Aristotle defends the truth 
of sense-perception. And it is in the interests of this view 
■ — as we should now say, " for the sake of knowledge " as 
such, and not, like Plato, for the sake of ethics — that he 
develops the theory of the syllogism. Complete science is 
realized only when that which needs to be proved is derived 
through all the intermediate members from its highest pre- 
suppositions. 2 In the Metaphysics he discusses the principle 
of non-contradiction and finds it the most cognizable of all 
principles ; and yet, for this very reason, quite undemon- 
strable. 3 The true object of knowledge he agrees with Plato 
in holding to be only the necessary and the unchanging. 
Cognition cannot be explained unless the universal and the 
particular are " looked at in implication of each other." 
But with him it is not the universal as extra to the concrete 
envisaged reality, but the universal as immanent in the in- 

1 Compare De Anima, and for citations see Zeller's " Outlines of the History 
of Greek Philosophy," p. 207, note. 

2 See Anal. Prior, p. 24, b. 18. 3 Met. p. 1005, b. 20. 



38 HISTORY OF OPINION 

dividual thing (universale in re, not universale extra rem). 
So, then, with Aristotle, as not with Plato, the important 
truth is emphasized that knowledge is a development resting 
upon a basis of sense-perception, and requiring rational 
faculty which proceeds according to laws of its own. In 
this regard, indeed, the pupil stands far nearer than his 
teacher to the modern psychology of knowledge. As has 
been well said, he displaces " the seat of reality " and trans- 
fers it from the abstract universal of mere thinking to the 
concrete particular of sense-perception. 1 

Finally, with Aristotle, far more than with Plato, knowl- 
edge has its end in itself rather than in being a means, 
or requisite, of virtue. Philosophy is itself a greater good 
than any of the virtues. 2 Cognition is thus more clearly dis- 
tinguished from moral activity. Connected with this diver- 
gence of theory is another : for, in the view of the later 
thinker, the attainment of knowledge is much less dependent 
on emotional and voluntary attitudes ; and empirical data are 
made more important for establishing our cognitions. Desire, 
aspiration, love, and intuition, retreat into the background. 
The doctrine of the practical syllogism remains, however : 
"No creature moves or acts except with some end in view." 3 
And the mission of philosophy also remains, as with Plato, 
" the knowledge of unchangeable Being and of the ultimate 
bases of things, of the universal and necessary." 4 

Little that throws new light on the problem of knowledge 
is to be learned from the post-Aristotelian schools of phi- 
losophy. The Stoics, however, elaborated in a somewhat 
instructive way the view of Aristotle regarding the criteria 
of cognition; while it was a fundamental tenet with this 
whole group of thinkers to emphasize the importance, for 
right living, of scientific inquiry. Though the ontology of 

1 Compare Grote, ii. pp. 257 f. 

2 See A. Grant, the Ethics of Aristotle (3d ed.), i. pp. 226 f. 

8 De Mot. An., vi. f. 4 Zeller, Outlines, etc., p. ISO. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 39 

the Stoics undoubtedly has a quasi-materialistic outcome, the 
content of human consciousness is so sharply contrasted with 
real being as to give a painful emphasis to the epistemo- 
logical problem : " How are we to construe the relations by 
which this content refers to real being and agrees with it ?" 
As to the sources of knowledge, Zeno holds that it must all 
proceed from perception, as though the soul were a tabula 
rasa ; but Chrysippus defines knowledge as a change produced 
on the soul by an object. From the impression (tvttghtk;) 
arises the presentation of mental images (fyavraaia). Out of 
perceptions come recollections, and from these experience ; 
and by conclusions from what is immediately given in percep- 
tions we arrive at general images {icoival evvoiai). Science, 
however, depends on the regulated formation and demonstra- 
tion of concepts. When pressed to the last resort, the 
possibility of knowledge is made by the Stoics to rest upon 
the assertion that otherwise no action carrying with it a 
rational conviction is possible. And so perception and science 
are both made, in an unanalyzed and inexplicable mixture, 
the sources of cognition. 

As to the nature of knowledge, Zeno's illustration (sensa- 
tion is like the extended ringers ; conception like the fist ; 
and knowledge, or science, like one fist clasped by another) 
seems to resolve the differences in the different stages of 
cognition into those of degree only. But knowledge is defined 
by the Stoics as " a fixed and immovable conception, or 
system of such conceptions." In other words, cognition is a 
system of perceptions and of notions derived by applying 
logical processes to perceptions. 

Here, at once the psychological doctrine of the nature of 
cognition is merged in the epistemological doctrine of the 
criteria of cognition. How is truth to be attained, and how 
distinguished from the error with which, in experience, it 
is so closely intermingled ? Now part of our conceptions 
are of such a rature that they compel consent ; we are con- 



40 HISTORY OF OPINION 

scious that they can only arise from something real, for they 
have direct evidence (ivepyeia). This kind of conceiving 
involves a mental " seizure " (KardXijyfr^') ; and so it differs 
from the passive having of mere notions, even when the 
conscious contents are the same, by having also the active 
consciousness of agreement with its object. Cognition, in the 
form of a " conceptual presentation " compelling conviction, 
becomes then the Criterion of Truth. 1 In all the Stoical 
doctrine the important psychological conclusions are recog- 
nized that (1) judgment, produced by the faculty of thought, 
is necessary to knowledge ; 2 and (2) knowledge which allows 
of certainty of conviction requires that perception and 
thought should be somehow brought into harmonious rela- 
tions. A true perception is one which represents the object 
as it really is ; but how shall we know when we have such 
a perception ? To answer this problem the appeal is some- 
times made to the strength of the impression and of the 
conviction which the impression carries ; sometimes to that 
distinction in the form of notions which laid the basis of 
the third part added to Logic by the Stoics, — namely, 
the Doctrine of the Standard of Truth or the Theory of 
Knowledge ; but, in the last resort, as has already been 
said, to the practical postulate that " unless the cognition 
of truth were possible, it would be impossible to act on fixed 
principles and rational convictions." 3 Here we return to the 
point on the circumference of the circle from which we set 
out : The search after a firm support for the life of conduct 
compels us to investigate the criteria of truth; but the investi- 
gation of the criteria of truth brings us to the conclusion that 
these criteria are chiefly to be found in the necessity felt by the 
soul for a firm support for the life of conduct. Let us not forget 

1 This view must not be confounded with that of the innate ideas which was 
propagated on into the Middle Ages under the Stoic name. 

2 Compare Sext. Adv. Math., viii. 70 f. ; Diog., vii. 63. 

3 This is the position of Plutarch and Stobreus ; on the entire subject see 
Heinze, " Zur Erkenntnisslehre der Stoiker," Leipzig, 18S0. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 41 

this gyratory motion of the Stoics in their quest for a defen- 
sible theory of cognition. It is somewhat of a return to Plato 
from Aristotle, who regarded knowledge rather more as an 
end in itself. It may suggest to the modern student of 
epistemology the truths that, in cognition, the soul is one, 
a unitary being incapable of divorcing feeling and willing 
from its thinking; and, also, that the action of so-called 
necessity and the action of reason is not two principles, but 
only one. 

Little additional to the lessons taught by the Stoics is to 
be gained by a study of the ancient Epicureans and Sceptics. 
The former held that, in theory, perception furnishes the 
criterion of truth and that what is most obvious (by its 
ive'pyeia) is always true; nor can such truth be doubted 
without destroying the foundations both of knowledge and 
of action. But, in practice, pleasure and pain furnish the 
criterion. Yet these teachers were, of course, pressed to 
the important admission that the knowledge requisite simply 
for wise conduct needs, besides, cognition of that which is 
not immediately perceptible ; it needs the cognition of the 
grounds of phenomena and also of the expectations for the 
future which may be inferred from these grounds. Thus 
both Epicureans and Stoics, as a sort of fundamental postu- 
late upon which alone the wise man can ground his maxims 
for the practical life, came to the recognition of the truth 
that there is agreement of the individual reason with the 
universal, with the World-Reason, — an implied mental seizure 
upon the heart of Reality. 

To something like the same opinion even certain of the 
Sceptics were finally driven. They did, indeed, theoretically 
hold that the essential nature of things is inaccessible to 
human knowledge ; nothing is immediately certain ; nothing, 
therefore, can be made mediately certain by processes of argu- 
ment. This scepticism they defended by calling attention to 
the conflict of opinions, to the endless regressus in proving, to 



42 HISTORY OF OPINION 

the relativity of all perception, to the impossibility of other 
than hypothetical premises, and to the circle in the syllogism. 
It is most interesting, however, to notice how some of them 
— Arcesilaus, for example — brought forward the view that, 
in the practical life, the wise man must content himself with 
a certain kind of trust (irlans), according to which some 
ideas are the more probable, reasonable, and adaptable to the 
purposes of life. 

This impressive exhibition which Greek antiquity furnishes 
of the relations, both in fact and in theory, between our 
doctrine of cognition and our life of conduct, as well as its 
accompanying recognition of " confidence," " conviction," 
" trust," as an inseparable element of cognition itself, fitly 
prepare the way for a consideration of the views of two great 
thinkers among the Fathers of the Christian Church. In 
respect of their insight into the true state of the case, and 
as estimated by the important points which they make through 
their discursive treatment of the subject, Origen and' Augus- 
tine are entirely worthy to stand beside Plato and Aristotle. 
To understand their points of view we must remember that 
the very nature of the regnant philosophy, and the urgent 
needs of the age, turned the currents of thought from purely 
speculative into practical and religious channels. The great 
doctrine of a " Christian Gnosis " was now the form in which 
a theory of knowledge was found interesting and was actually 
discussed. Two important truths derived from non-Chris- 
tian Gnosticism became, from this time onward, very in- 
fluential. These were the exceedingly influential conception 
of self-consciousness (irapafcoXovOelv eavrw), — of intellect as 
thought active and in motion (1/0*70-19), having for its object 
itself, as a resting, objective thought (vo-qrov) ; and thus 
the identification of intellect as knowledge with intellect 
as being. 1 

1 See Windelband, A History of Philosophy, p. 234 ; and Plotiuus, Eun. L 
4, 10. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 43 

In Origen's thought, as in the thought of Clement aud 
of the Alexandrine School generally, Christianity — its tenets 
being rationally understood and explained — is Knowledge. 
But to attain this knowledge, we must advance to it, from 
faith through philosophy ; and, indeed, he who would attain 
the true Gnosis without philosophy is to be compared to the 
man who would gather grapes without cultivating his vines. 1 
The sources of such true and highest knowledge are both 
subjective and objective. Among the former are faith, hope, 
imagination, love ; these are the avenues through which 
cognition comes to the human soul. Love and mental grasp 
go hand in hand. Here, then, we meet again with the beauti- 
ful and stirring conception of Plato, that the craving for 
truth is divinely planted, as an honorable passion which 
may not honorably be denied. Gaining knowledge implies 
a progressive assimilation of the soul to God. The objective 
sources of knowledge, in the view of this Church Father, are 
Scripture and the- Church, which are assumed to be in har- 
mony. But the source of all true knowledge is undivided ; 
it is one, and only one ; it is divine revelation. God him- 
self, " an incomparable intellectual nature " (" in all parts 
Mom? and, so to speak, e Ez^a? ") is the Mind, and the Source, 
from which all intellectual nature or mind takes its begin- 
ning. 2 Origen's fundamental postulate, then, is this : The 
mind of the illumined and cultured man is akin to God, 
and has thus become capable of knowing the truth of God, 
the Absolute Mind. For how could rational beings exist 
unless the Word or Reason had previously existed ? How 
could men be wise, unless there were wisdom in the world 
of the really Existent ? Rational beings derive their rational 
nature from God through the Logos. " Now we are," he 
affirms, 3 " of opinion that every rational creature, without 
any distinction, receives a share of Him," — that is, of the 

1 Compare Strom. II. vii. and ix. 

2 De Frinc, I. i. 6. 3 De Princ. II. vii. 2. 



44 HISTORY OF OPINION 

Holy Spirit, the revealer of Absolute Reason to the reason 
of man. 

Origen's view of the nature of knowledge follows from the 
foregoing description of the sources of knowledge. This 
thinker felt that, while much of the non-Christian philoso- 
phizing moved in the region of mere abstraction, the Christian 
Gnosis gave a living grasp upon realities, both persons and 
facts, which it was his aim to present in the form of a 
rational system as objective truth. Not by sense-perception 
alone can knowledge come. For " it is one thing to see, 
and another to know : to see and to be seen is a property 
of material bodies ; to know, and to be known, an attribute 
of intellectual being." 1 Knowledge is of the mind, intel- 
lectual. But the proposal to change faith into knowledge 
does not imply questioning, much less rejecting the entire 
content of faith ; it implies rather the attempt to give to 
the accepted content of faith a scientific form, such as shall 
commend it to philosophical or reflective minds. Neverthe- 
less, it has truly been said : " In all such doctrines the inter- 
est of science ultimately predominates over that of faith ; 
they are accommodations of philosophy to the need of reli- 
gious authority, felt at this time." 

The distinctive thing about Origen's answer to the inquiry 
into the sources and the nature of human cognition is that 
he makes it a commerce of minds. The secret of this episte- 
mological theory is given in the consideration that knoivledge 
is a transaction between rational beings. As to the source 
of knowledge, it is found in Absolute Personal Reason reveal- 
ing its true life within the human personal reason. As to 
the nature of knowledge, it is a certain complex attitude of 
human personal reason toward Absolute Personal Reason. 
In this complex attitude, the more practical and distinctively 
ethical " momenta " of admiring and aspiring love, of faith 
as a sort of opening of the soul to the truth, which is both 

1 De Princ. I. i. 8. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 45 

a reasonable acquiescence (\oyiK7] avyicdOea^) and a volun- 
tary grasp on the truth (irpdkq^rK e/covcno*;), are made promi- 
nent by this Church Father. However, since free-will — the 
capacity for virtue and its opposite, the power to become 
wise or to refuse to become wise — is the centre of per- 
sonality, it must co-operate with feeling and intellect, in 
order to attain the true Gnosis. For how can knowledge 
be divorced from free-will, since every judgment, which 
both accepts and declares the truth, is an act of free-will ? 

Origen is neither so happy nor so suggestive in his answer 
to the question, How shall the false and the true be distin- 
guished ? for, whether we emphasize faith, judgment, con- 
viction, opinion as to the content of revelation, or the 
decision of free-will, each one and all of these may be 
evoked in the interests of the false as well as of the true. 
This fact raises the problem of the criteria of knowledge. 
Origen takes it for granted that the contents of Christian 
faith, as given in Holy Scripture and declared by the voice 
of the Church, are true. The acceptance of what is authenti- 
cally taught is thus made, by his epistemological theory, 
the ultimate test of truth. Authority becomes the objective 
criterion of knowledge ; faith is the right attitude of soul 
for the attainment of this knowledge. We must not, how- 
ever, discredit this thinker — the most suggestive of all 
thinkers within the ancient Church — by understanding his 
principle of authority in the mediaeval or — worse still ! — 
in the post-Reformation sense. It is not the ipse-dixit, 
either of the Biblical writers or of the traditors of churchly 
tenets, which Origen would elevate into the place of the ulti- 
mate test of truth. His epistemological postulate, as bearing 
upon the criteria of knowledge, is the assumption of an essen- 
tial identity, in the ground of self -revealing Reason from which 
both spring, between authority and rational knowledge. 

The significance of Origen is so great for an historical study 
of the opinions of reflective thinkers upon the epistemological 



46 HISTORY OF OPINION 

problem that we gather up his more impressive views into 
the following statements : — 

All knowledge is, by nature, a revelation from Absolute 
Reason, " a spiritual enlightenment " from the one Holy 
Spirit of God. Hence the ontological postulate of Origen's 
theory of knowledge is the reality of the idea of the Good, — 
a truly Platonic postulate. Our knowledge is the human 
equivalent of the Divine Idea. Thus insight is more empha- 
sized than ratiocination ; and the gaining of knowledge be- 
comes, for the soul of man, an epoch, an illumination, a 
surprise. 

Faith and reason co-operate, in the unity of the soul-life, 
in order to make possible the reception and the attainment 
of knowledge. 

Free-will, issuing in judgment of the truth, is essential to 
all knowledge ; it is, indeed, the very self-activity which 
becomes knowledge when it is directed rightly toward the 
absolute and self-revealing Reason. Diversity of will is the 
cause of the variety in human opinions and in the courses of 
conduct pursued by different men. Perversity of will is the 
cause, not only of all evil conduct, but also of all error in 
judgment. It is the function of the moral will, rooted and 
grounded in love, to lead on the acquirement of all knowledge 
and all wisdom to the final goal, which is the vision of all in 
God. 1 But this will must be motived, backed up, and spurred 
forward by rational love (Xoyi/cr) ope|t?). 

It was Augustine, however, who first grappled w 7 ith the 
problem of cognition in a thoroughly psychological and criti- 
cal way. Indeed, Augustine may be said to have been the 
first to place philosophy upon a psychological basis. It must 
be remembered, however, that we have two men expressing 
themselves in the later writings of this Church Father : and 
that these two minds move in opposite directions, and even 
come to contradictory conclusions. It is not Augustine the 

1 Compare De Princ. I. v. 3 ; I. vi. 3 ; II. i. 2 ; II. iv. 3. 



HISTORY OF OPINION" 47 

ecclesiastic, alarmed for the foundations of Christian faith 
and making an exoteric appeal to the authority of the Church 
as the criterion of knowledge, in behalf of the uninitiated 
and unenlightened, to whom we may hopefully look for epis- 
temological truth ; it is rather to Augustine the master of 
psychological analysis, and, in some sort, the founder of 
philosophy upon the indisputable data of consciousness for 
all places and all times. In Augustine's case the theologian 
and the philosopher are not, as in the case of Origen, of 
one and the same mind, equally sincere. The theologian, 
indeed, is ready at times to run perilously near the final 
sacrifice of all consistency, if not of all claim to sincerity. 
But the psychologist and philosopher expounds the principle 
of the immediate and absolute certainty of self-conscious- 
ness in a way to anticipate Descartes and even to excel 
him. In his treatment of this epistemological doctrine Aug- 
ustine is a modern man ; or, rather, he is a thinker for all 
times to venerate. 

It is with respect to the criteria of knowledge, the function 
of philosophical doubt, and the ultimate grounds of certainty, 
that Augustine rises superior to Aristotle and to all antiquity. 
Here we are charmed by his skill in psychological analysis 
and by the thoroughness of his reflective thinking. In these 
subjects he so far anticipates and even surpasses the so-called 
" father of modern philosophy " as to warrant what Fenelon 
said of him, that he would sooner trust Augustine than Des- 
cartes upon matters of pure philosophy ; indeed, the Arch- 
bishop of Cambrai even declared that a collection of this 
Church Father's utterances would be u much superior to the 
Meditations " of the French philosopher. And Nourisson 1 
affirms : " It is beyond all question that this great man made 
use of the method, and put in practice the principles, which 
Descartes would one day employ in order to reconstruct 
philosophy." 

1 Progres de la Pensee Humaine, p. 209. 



48 HISTORY OF OPINION 

Augustine sought the way to certainty of truth through 
scepticism and criticism. He pointed out that all the various 
kinds of conscious states — memory, judgment, knowledge, 
and will — are involved in the very act of doubting. He 
sought also to demonstrate the existence of necessary ele- 
ments in all cognition in opposition to the Academicians, 
with whom he at one time agreed as to the practical end of 
happiness. 1 In the most primary and incontestable fashion, 
he thinks, does the certainty of self-consciousness affirm the 
reality of the conscious subject. 2 In order even to err, J, 
that err, must exist. Even the possibility of our being de- 
ceived implies the fact of our existence, and makes being, 
life, and thought co-ordinate. Every one who knows himself 
as a doubter knows the truth, and from this fact is certain 
that he knows. Let, then, the man who wishes to have 
knowledge attain the science of Self. But faith is necessary 
to knowledge of the existence of other men ; and we can only 
believe (not know) that material bodies exist, though the 
belief is practically necessary. With profound epistemologi- 
cal reflection Augustine finds the idea of God, as absolute 
Truth, involved in the certainty of self-consciousness. Eor 
how could we so much as question and doubt our sense- 
perceptions, if we had not derived criteria and standards of 
truth from other sources ? The very life of the human soul 
is such as to show that there is an unchanging norm of 
truth, — God, who includes all real being. Thus does this 
great thinker strive to place on a psychological basis the 
epistemological conclusion that the existence of truth cannot 
be doubted, and that all Reality is implicate in the being, 
knowing, and willing of the self-conscious subject? 

i See the De Vita beat , and compare Cont. Acad. III. xi. 26, where he finds 
the test of truth in disjunctive propositions, and remarks that perceptions are, at 
least, subjectively true. 

2 De Vita beat., ii. 7 ; Solil. IT. i. 1 f. ; De Ver. Kel. xxxix. 72 f. ; De Trin. x. 14. 

3 Confessions, VI. v. 7 ; De Fide Rerum, i. 2 ; De Ver. Rel. xxxix. 72 f. ; De 
Lib. Arb. II. ii. 6 ; De Civ. Dei, i. 6. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 49 

Augustine's view of the sources and nature of human cog- 
nition is, of course, dependent upon his positions regarding 
the criteria of all cognitive faculty. Besides sensation Qsen- 
sus), he holds that man possesses the higher capacity of 
reason (intellectus and ratio) ; we thus have immediate per- 
ception of incorporeal truths, — the principles of all judging. 
Thus, too, all individual consciousness — and no less in its 
doubting than in every other form of its actual functioning — 
transcends itself as individual; it sees itself attached in its 
own exercise to something universal and universally valid. 1 
It was, indeed, the influence of theological prejudice against 
the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls which led Augustine 
to abandon the Platonic reminiscence (avdfivtjcrLs), and in more 
nearly the modern way regard reason as the intuitive faculty for 
the incorporeal world. Yet he conceives of the existence of the 
ideas in neo-Platonic fashion. They are princip ales for mce vel 
rationes rerum stabiles atque incommutabiles, quce in divino intel- 
lects, continentur. All rational knowledge is, then, ultimately, 
knowledge of God ; all ideas are in God ; He is the eternal 
Ground of all form, — the Absolute Unity, the Supreme Beauty. 
The knowledge which Augustine seeks is, then, summed up as 
knowledge of Self and of God. 2 The sciences, which in early 
life he regarded as avenues to knowledge of God and to sal- 
vation, he later regarded as of little worth. Nor can there 
be any doubt that this disregard of scientific knowledge, born 
of theological prejudice, had, through the influence of Augus- 
tine, a decisive and baleful effect upon the subsequent history 
of Christendom. It is one of the most interesting specu- 
lations as to what might have been in the case of that 
" long-standing conflict " between science and religion, if the 
Descartes of Christian antiquity had not been overlain and 
submerged by the ecclesiastic anxious to defend the supreme 
and unquestioned authority of the Church. 

1 De Trin. XII. ii. 2 ; Cont. Acad. III. xiii. 29 ; De Lib. Arb. II. in. 7. 

2 Deura et animam scire cupio. Nihilne plus 1 Nihil omnino. (Solil. I. 7.) 

4 



50 HISTORY OF OPINION 

With Augustine, even more than with Origen, the doctrine 
of free-will is dominant in connection with his entire view of 
the criteria, sources, nature, and limits of cognition. The 
primacy of the will is maintained in the entire process of 
thinking, ideating, and knowing. Only in relation to the 
highest truths, the rational cognitions, is the attitude of the 
mind more passive and receptive. Here revelation, as a 
divine illumination, has its truest sphere. Hence the doc- 
trine of Truth by Faith — a doctrine which Kant revived 
as the positive outcome of his critical protest against an 
unwarranted extension of the pretence of knowledge. How- 
ever, with Augustine, full rational insight remains first in 
dignity. But such insight is not for the weak nor for the 
average man ; not for the wise even, except imperfectly. 
Here again we are made witnesses to the disturbing influence 
of the ecclesiastic's fears lest the authority of the Church 
might suffer if knowledge of the transcendent should be too 
broadly affirmed as lying within the possible domain of the 
" plain man's " self-conscious life. 

On the whole, however, what student of the history of 
epistemological doctrine can deny the eminent distinction 
which Nourisson claims for Augustine as a reflective and 
critical thinker upon the problem of knowledge ? To him 
more than to any one else in antiquity (indeed, he has few 
rivals in modern times) we may ascribe the three following 
important merits : (1) The philosophic use of methodical 
doubt; (2) the doctrine of self-consciousness as a manifes- 
tation, absolutely certain, of the really existent ; and (3) the 
recognition of the evidence for making this particular cer- 
tainty the criterion of all ulterior certainty. 

During the Middle Ages the entire problem of Being and 
Knowing became absorbed in discussion over the nature 
and reality of so-called " universals." The significance of 
this discussion for all mediaeval philosophy, on account of 
its bearing upon the metaphysics of Christian doctrine, is 



HISTORY OF OPINION" 51 

at once apparent. The general epistemological assumption 
of the regnant school was that the more universal substances 
are, the more real they are. Reality is thus regarded as a 
matter of degrees, or as measurable by a scale in which 
things and souls can have more or less of participation. This 
is the very opposite of the affirmation of Lotze, that the mean- 
est thing which exists is as truly real as is the most important 
and imposing universal. In the mediaeval thinking the iden- 
tity of Real Being with the thinnest or highest abstractions 
was thus maintained ; real dependence of things and events 
was also identified with logical dependence. A pyramid of 
concepts was erected, and to this conceptual structure was 
given an ontological significance, without further attempt at 
criticism or proof. From this doctrine a transition was inevi- 
table to the view which saw the universal in every concrete 
existence (universalia in re). But this doctrine, too, was 
taken abstractly. One and the same reality was held to be, 
in its differing status, animate being, man, Greek, Socrates. 
Formal and logical pantheism — essentially like that of the 
great Jewish thinker, Spinoza — was the inevitable outcome. 
The final ontological assertion, built upon the fundamental 
epistemological assumption, becomes the following: God = 
Being superlatively real Qens realissimum). 

Some wrong would be done to these mediaeval thinkers, 
however, if it were held that they contributed nothing what- 
ever to the statement or solution of the problem of knowl- 
edge. In the field of psychology they attained (by speculation, 
of coarse, rather than by experiment and induction) a 
few valuable results. The Platonists and the Mystics, who 
undertook to exhibit the development of inner life as the 
history of salvation for the individual soul, were promi- 
nent workers in this field. Especially important is their 
thought that, by virtue of the motive forces of will, faith 
furnishes conditions to knowledge. Thus Bernard is never 
weary of denouncing the heathenish nature of the pure 




52 HISTORY OF OPINION 

impulse after knowledge for its own sake. "With the great 
Thomas the psychology of knowledge holds an important 
place. 1 The human soul is a substance, incorporeal, imper- 
ishable, and capable of apprehending universals. Yet he 
maintains the unity of the soul, 2 and informs us that such 
terms as "the vegetative soul," "sensitive soul," "rational 
soul," etc., are not to be understood as other than designat- 
ing functions of one and the same soul. By virtue of the 
same soul, Socrates is both man and animal. The essential 
form, both generic and specific, comes from the soul, which 
is the source of all life. With Hugo, cogitation, meditation, 
contemplation, are the three stages of mental activity which 
result in knowledge. Man has the eye of flesh to know the 
corporeal world, the eye of reason to know his own inner 
nature, and the eye of contemplation to know the spiritual 
world and God. But Duns Scotus rejects the hypothesis of 
soul as pure form and energy, possible apart from the body ; 
and between the body and the intelligent soul he introduces 
an inherent form a corporeitatis. 

In accordance with his doctrine of the nature of the soul, 
Thomas Aquinas places it on a sort of middle ground within 
the hierarchy of substances. As to the source of knowledge, 
it follows that the soul of man does not possess truth per 
se; it must acquire truth. This it does by experiencing 
certain elementary notions through the senses as its instru- 
ment. The whole problem of the origin and nature of 
knowledge must, of course, be attacked by the Schoolmen 
in some form to make intelligible the process by which 
universal ideas arise in the individual consciousness. Nomi- 
nalism, in the person of Abelard and John of Salisbury, 
attempted to show the psychological origin of knowledge. 
Sensation, as confused idea, gives content to imagination, 

1 See liis Summa Theol., qnrest. 75-90 and 92, Part I. 

2 See the section, De Anima, in the Qutestiones; especially, §§ 4-7, 11-13, 
and 20. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 53 

which grasps and holds together the content; then under- 
standing, by discursive activity, elaborates it into judgments 
and concepts; and after all these conditions are fulfilled, 
somehow or other, opinion, faith, and knowledge arise, in 
which the intellect ultimately knows its object as a single 
collective perception or intuition. These writers hold to 
the modern theory that in sensation, perception, and imagi- 
nation, an act of judgment is performed. 

Thomas Aquinas and the Realists generally, however, 
held that all true knowledge — all science — is of the intel- 
lect; the psychological inquiry as to the nature, results, 
and certainty of its functioning is thus made the most 
important of all epistemological inquiries. The puzzling 
problem becomes, then, to reconcile the individuality of 
intelligence with the universality of the ideas. 1 The answer 
of Thomas to this problem is an evasion of it : the power of 
apprehending the universal is assigned by him to an " intel- 
lective soul." This results in a division of the faculties of 
the soul, which is wholly inconsistent with his maintenance 
elsewhere of the true view that the soul is one, but gifted 
with diverse energies. For while some of the faculties, as 
senses and imagination, are in both body and soul, others, 
he thinks, like will and intellect, participate in no respect 
in the body. 2 

With such views of the origin of knowledge as the fore- 
going, the validating of knowledge becomes a hopeless 
puzzle. And, indeed, the epistemological and the ontologi- 
cal problems are scarcely conceived of apart. Thomas 
Aquinas approaches the former of the two problems from 

1 See Met. i., prooem., cap. 1 ; Phys. i., cap. 1 ; and comp. Haureau, Philosophie 
Scholastique, ii., pp. 110 and 116. 

2 Windelband (ibid. p. 325) holds that Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus alike 
followed the old Greek idea that, in the process of cognition, by means of the co- 
operation of soul and external object, a copy of the latter arises, to be appre- 
hended by the soul. This doctrine Occam rejected and held a view more akin to 
that of Locke and his followers. With him an idea is indeed, as such, a state 
or act of the soul, but it forms in the soul a sign for the external thing. 



54 



HISTORY OF OPINION 



the point of view taken by Aristotle in his doctrine of form 
and matter. The doctrine of universals as entities, and the 
attempt to explain and to validate knowledge, realistically, 
by the assumption of these entities, are abandoned by him. 
Such ideas he regards as mere fictions, wrongly posited 
in the interests of an attempt to explain the knowledge of 
things. But God knows all things in themselves, and has 
no need of the intervention of ideas. In Occam's writings 
the fundamental separation between the world of sense and 
the supersensible world bears fruit in the beginnings of a 
psychological and epistemological Idealism. The world of 
consciousness becomes another world from the world of 
things ; and sensuous knowledge loses for him its character 
of being a copy as compared with its real object. Between 
the psychological, the inner, reality and the ontological, or 
outer, reality there is a relation, but it is not that of 
resemblance. 

Perhaps the most important and distinguishing feature of 
the doctrine of the Middle Ages is its extension of that 
schism between faith and knowledge which appeared in the 
later writings of Augustine. Albertus holds that philosophy 
(as of knowledge) and theology (as of faith) can no longer 
be identified. All that is really known in philosophy by 
the light of nature holds good also in theology; but the 
soul of man can completely know only that the principles 
of which it carries within itself. Thomas seems to reverse 
the relation between faith and knowledge which Origen and 
Augustine (in his earlier writings) maintained. The rela- 
tion then becomes one of different degrees of development; 
but philosophical knowledge is given in man's natural 
endowment, which is brought to full realization only by the 
grace active in revelation. Duns Scotus goes further and 
maintains that theology is a practical discipline, while phi- 
losophy is pure theory. Philosophy is thus made a secular 
science set over against theology as a divine science. Here 



HISTORY OF OPINION 55 

the relation becomes one of separation; and a contradic- 
tion is ready to emerge between knowledge and faith. This 
separation became, as the rights of reason were more vigor- 
ously maintained, a charter of liberty for philosophy, but a 
condemnation of theology to the prison-house of external 
authority. More especially as to faith and knowledge, 
Scotus maintains that belief in the Bible and in the infal- 
libility of the Apostles rests upon the authority of the 
Church. 

At one point, however, does this thinker keep alive the 
warm and vital thought of Plato, of Origen, and of Augustine. 
As an opponent of determinism, Scotus emphasizes the self- 
activity of will — as everywhere else, so also in knowing. 
He maintains, in opposition to Thomas, that thinking often 
depends on willing. The beginning of all knowledge can be 
called an act of receiving, inasmuch as every perception has 
sensation for its basis et seminarium, which is possible only 
as the result of an impression or image of the object. 
Even this, however, is not mere passivity. In all percep- 
tion, the external object and the perceiving subject co- 
operate. 1 The calling up of the phantasmata and their 
transformation in memory also implies activity of will ; 
still more does the active intellect, the power of the soul, 
which is related to the sensible images as light to colors. 
But especially where the thing is not certain, and the con- 
sent of will is compelled, belief (fides), as an act of will, is 
necessary. 2 Hence it follows that a great deal of our knowl- 
edge is based upon faith ; indeed, the greater part of knowl- 
edge is but a completion of belief. 3 

These few thoughts concerning the philosophy of knowl- 
edge are discovered, only after winnowing them out of much 
chaff, in the thinking of the Middle Ages. The number of 

1 Op. Oxon. I. D. 3 quaest. 4, 7, 8. 

2 De Anima, quaest. 17 ; and Report. Par. IV. D. 45, 9. 

3 Report. Par., Prol., quaest. 2. 



56 HISTORY OF OPINION 

thoughts which has any essential value would scarcely be at 
all increased even if this very brief sketch were indefinitely 
extended. But they show how the continuity of human 
reflection upon the epistemological problem was maintained, 
and what are the matters in respect of its statement and 
solution which it was considered necessary to keep before 
the mind for its critical consideration. 



CHAPTER III 

HISTORY OF OPINION {continued) 

IT is a statement common among historians of philosophy 
that the foundations of the modern view regarding the 
sources, the nature, and the criteria of knowledge were laid 
by the reflective thinking of Descartes. And there is a cer- 
tain warrant in the facts themselves for such a statement. 
For it has been shown how that side of the philosophizing of 
Augustine over the epistemological problem which, in spirit 
and with respect to the significance of its conclusions, was 
opposed to the trustful attitude of Origen toward the illu- 
mined reason of the individual, and which upheld the au- 
thority of the Church against free critical inquiry, dominated 
the doctrine of the Middle Ages. Descartes, indeed, took the 
appeal away from this tribunal of ecclesiastical authority, to 
that which holds its court of judgment within the inmost 
recesses of every man's self-consciousness. In doing so, 
however, he only returned to the other and better side of the 
philosophizing of Augustine himself. Neither in acuteness 
of analysis, nor in clearness and beauty of statement, nor 
especially in his manner of finding the reality of the soul, of 
the world, and of God, implicate in the primary act of cog- 
nition, was the founder of modern philosophy the equal of 
the Church Father. Indeed, we fear it must be confessed 
that, with the exception of Kant and Hume, down to 
very recent years, modern philosophy has not been much 
superior to ancient philosophy in its handling of the most 
important points in the problem of knowledge. Logic and 



58 HISTORY OF OPINION 

psychology have greatly flourished ; but a satisfying episte- 
mology has been less promoted thereby than it would seem 
reasonable to expect. The greater freshness and naivete of 
those earlier times, and the more ardent and unconcealed 
interest in the bearings of sceptical and agnostic conclusions 
upon the concerns of ethics and religion, make the thought of 
antiquity all the more profitable for studious consideration. 
The most distinguished exception to this disparaging view 
of modern efforts is, of course, Immanuel Kant. He was 
the first of all the world's thinkers to give to the problem of 
knowledge a formulated construction ; to attempt the follow- 
ing of this problem through many winding ways, down to 
its lowest depths and out to its farthest limits, in elaborate 
monographs ; and so to set his answer before mankind that 
thenceforth its immense significance and portentous claim 
could never fail of recognition. Few — even among the 
ancient and mediaeval teachers of the Christian Church — 
had more upon their heart and conscience the practical out- 
come of the attempt at a settlement of the problem. Out- 
side of what leads up to, and of what has flowed from, the 
Kantian critique of knowledge, there is little to add to 
ancient and mediaeval thinking, by way of profit derived 
from an historical sketch. 

Most of the philosophical works of Descartes bear upon his 
attempt to construct a theory of knowledge. His "Rules 
for the Direction of the Mind " is perhaps of first importance 
here ; while the " Discourse on Method " is more obviously 
directed to the same end. Some of the more impressive 
"Meditations" concern "Things that may be doubted," etc. 
The posthumous " Recherches de la Ve'rite* " deals, as its title 
signifies, with similar themes. In the First Part of the 
" Principles of Philosophy " Descartes discusses the founda- 
tions of human knowledge. Both his "Treatise on the 
Passions" and his "Treatise on Man" occupy themselves 
with safeguarding the mind against error and assisting it 



HISTORY OF OPINION 59 

in the ascertainment of truth ; while even in his " Treatise 
on the World," his "Happy Life and Summum Bonum," 
and in many of his "Letters," such topics as truth, error, 
knowledge, and the validity of our ideas, are continually 
brought to the front. That there is a philosophical problem 
which demands inquiry into the inmost nature and the neces- 
sary limits of knowledge, Descartes expressly affirms. No 
subject of investigation, he thinks, can be more important; 
indeed, in one of his Rules (No. VIII.) he affirms, "There is 
here a question which a man must examine, at least once 
in his life, if he love the truth. " But his more distinctive 
merit lay in the proposal to make a methodical search after 
a science of man's cognitive faculty ; and to build upon the 
truth revealed by this search, when conducted to its utmost 
possible limits, a superstructure of truths which might with- 
stand all the assaults of scepticism. For so important did 
Descartes consider method in inquiry that he even goes to 
the extreme and absurd length of declaring it better never 
to discover the truth than not to use method in its discovery. 
It is quite unnecessary for our purpose to rehearse the well- 
known Cartesian tenets which have a bearing upon episte- 
mological inquiry. The return from trust in the principle 
of external authority to confidence in the witness whose light 
shines within the soul of every man, is the important contri- 
bution which Descartes made to the theory of knowledge in 
its more modern form. This inner light is to be disclosed, 
however, by the use of methodical doubt. In the primary 
fact of knowledge — the cogito, even if it be in the special 
form of a dubito — the self -known reality of the subject of 
cognition, and the implied existence, as not-me, of the 
object of cognition, are both to be discerned. For the cogito, 
in barbarous Latin, = cogitans sum : thinking is self-conscious 
being; and there are certain forms of this cogito which, when 
their nature as mental transactions is fully discerned, can- 
not be accounted for otherwise than on the assumption that 



60 HISTORY OF OPINION 

somewhat other than the thinking subject has being too. 
Among those ideas which demand by their very nature an 
extra-mental correlate, the idea of God stands eminent and 
supreme. It appears, as of its own evidence, the idea of 
that which makes irresistible claim to be really existent. It 
thus becomes the bridge of Reality between the indubitably 
self-cognizing existence of the soul and the existence of the 
world of actual things. 

The several gaps in that Cartesian argument which sets 
the limits and establishes the validity of human cognitive 
faculty have often enough been pointed out. Of it all, 
only two things remain, forever sure and unchanging so 
long as the fundamental construction of man's intellect 
remains sure and unchanged : these are, first, the rights of 
methodical doubt, or (to use a more modern term) of a 
critical self-examination on the part of the knower; and, 
second, the necessity for acknowledging, theoretically as 
well as practically, the ultimate limits of this doubt when, 
by the critical process itself, we stand face to face with the 
implicates of every act of knowing. 

It was a hindrance to the development of epistemology 
that Descartes' elaborate doctrine of method, with the 
unwarrantable hopes and perverse trials which it excited, 
became so influential with his successors. For this he is 
himself largely to blame. He was always a dry light, with 
a mind better adapted for mathematics and speculative 
physics than for critical philosophy. His most admired 
type of investigation was the mathematical method, as 
involving "the analysis of the ancients," the "algebra of 
the moderns," and the application of both to geometry. The 
scope of this method he considered unlimited;, and for it he 
claimed a decided superiority over all other methods, as 
being the origin and source of all truths. In fact, however, 
the entire Cartesian method, as employed by its founder, is, 
in the last resort, an appeal to the self-conscious subject 



HISTORY OF OPINION 61 

of all the states of knowledge. The final test of all truth 
is "the self -evidencing conception of a sound, attentive 
mind." Windelband 1 is, then, justified in affirming that 
the disciples of Descartes confounded "the relatively free 
creative activity " which Descartes himself had in mind (the 
analytical method as he pursued it) with "the rigidly de- 
monstrative system of exposition which they found in 
Euclid's text-book of geometry." In "all the change of 
epistemological investigations until far into the eighteenth 
century, this conception of mathematics was a firmly estab- 
lished axiom of all parties." It reached its culmination in 
the pantheism of Spinoza, where, without previous critical 
examination of the underlying assumptions of the mind, a 
logical systemization of the most abstract conceptions more 
mathematico is identified throughout with the essential truths 
respecting the really Existent. But even in Spinoza's case, 
the purely speculative interests were not left wholly without 
suggestion and control on the part of the practical and the 
religious. And at the last, the glow of that love which is 
the attitude of the philosophical mind toward the Absolute 
One warms and illumines the theorems of his barren and 
frozen theological geometry. In the total system, side by 
side with the beginning "Definition," "By substance I un- 
derstand that which is in itself and is conceived through 
itself," stands the closing axiomatic "Proposition": "He 
who clearly and distinctly understands himself and his 
affects loves God, and better loves him the better he under- 
stands his affects. " Thus the way of mathematical demon- 
stration, on the unverified and uncritical assumption that 
conceptual gymnastics by seizing the rope let down by 
Euclid can climb alone to the heights of insight into Ab- 
solute Being, has become the way of salvation. It was in 
more simple and effective, if less elaborate fashion, that 
Jacob Boehme, and the Mystics generally, controverted and 

1 A History of Philosophy, p. 395. 



62 HISTORY OF OPINION 

abandoned the Cartesian theory of knowledge. With them, 
as with Spinoza at the last, the affectional and emotional 
interests prevailed — through help of the stimulus given to 
claims of knowing by means of faith, intuition, and the 
unreasoned leap to the seizure, as truth, of what the soul 
ardently desires. 

It was the Englishman John Locke who first pursued in 
more elaborate researches the psychological path to the prob- 
lem of epistemology. But alas ! like so many of his avowed 
or unconscious followers, he was guilty of the fallacy which 
lies in the supposition — even now so widely current — that 
a survey of the superficial content of our individual cogni- 
tions, and of their more obvious associations and logical 
relations, is a sufficient answer to the quest for a phi- 
losophy of knowledge. Thus having led us face to face with 
the problem, he leaves both us and it hanging in mid-air. 
It is indeed difficult to classify Locke with respect to the 
position which he assumes toward truly epistemological 
questions. It is, therefore, easy to deny that it is either the 
position of sensualism or the position of idealistic empiri- 
cism, or that of unqualified empiricism. 1 The epistemology 
of Locke is, doubtless, an espousal of some sort of empiri- 
cism ; but then of what sort ? To this the most obvious 
answer seems to be that he never clearly comprehended the 
inquiry into the nature of knowledge as a speculative prob- 
lem, which requires an analysis that goes beyond the analysis 
of descriptive psychology and results in disclosing and test- 
ing the ultimate metaphysical assumptions implicate in all 
exercise of cognitive function. To be sure, there is a recog- 
nized problem of knowledge in pursuit of some answer to 
which his whole course of investigation conducts him. He 
is induced to recognize this problem by following out his 
first and purely psychological inquiry, — namely, as to the 

1 Thus Grimm denies that any of the current descriptions is satisfactory as 
applied to Locke. See " Zur Geschichte des Erkenntnissproblems," p. 340. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 63 

rise of the ideas in grounds of inner experience. Even here, 
a soul, as a real being with an inherent capacity or sus- 
ceptibility to special forms of excitement, is assumed by 
Locke from the first. Certainly the founder of English psy- 
chology was very far from intending to teach a science of 
"psychology without a soul." 

But from the very first, too, as Locke himself assures us 
in his own account of what led to his investigations " Con- 
cerning Human Understanding, " and of what he hoped to 
accomplish by these investigations (namely, first, to " inquire 
into the original of the ideas ; " secondly, " to show what 
knowledge the understanding hath by those ideas, and the 
certainty, evidence, and extent of it;" thirdly, "to make 
some inquiry into the nature and grounds of faith, or 
opinion "), a there is a goal held up to view which the plain, 
historical method he pursues can never reach. " Knowledge 
of our capacity a cure of scepticism " is the heading of one of 
the earlier articles of his book. But when we are informed 
that, besides the presentations of sense, there are in con- 
sciousness certain other ideas, "originally begotten," which 
proceed from the operations of the thinking activity itself, 
and which become apprehended by reflection upon them, the 
need that criticism should be applied to these ideas is ob- 
vious enough. But if either of these classes of ideas, when 
— to use the Lockean expression — we "become conscious of 
them," are held to constitute cognition in the special sense, 
then the problem of epistemology is upon us with its full 
force. For the " original " of the cognitions is drawn from 
experience; but the cognitions contain what appears to 
transcend experience ; and thus what Locke defines as " the 
apprehension of the agreement or non-agreement of our 
ideas " is, as yet, not cognition at all. To explain its being 
transmuted into cognition, Locke has only the assumptions 
of a naive, common-sense realism. His account of "the 

1 Book I., chap, i., 3. 



64 HISTORY OF OPINION 

origin, certainty, and extent of human knowledge " comes 
to an unsatisfactory end within the field of a descriptive 
psychology. It never becomes a truly epistemological affair; 
for it never bases itself upon a thorough sceptical inquiry 
and critical analysis of the processes and postulates of all 
knowledge. And the same shirking of the real problem of 
cognition, under cover of a descriptive psychology or a 
formal logic, has characterized the work of English writers 
almost down to the present hour. 

Perhaps the most important contribution which Locke 
made to a future theory of knowledge lay in the emphasis 
he placed upon a distinction between the primary and the 
secondary qualities of things. Berkeley, while pushing 
sceptical inquiry into the field of qualities of the primary 
order, the cognition of which was with Locke a kind of copy- 
ing-off process, still confined his critical philosophy to the 
nature and validity of sense-perception. He raised, how- 
ever, one forceful question in such a way as henceforth to 
allow of only one intelligent answer. How shall aught, not 
in reality mentally represented or mentally representable, 
be similar to that which is mentally represented ? What 
cannot in any manner or degree be mentally represented, 
that cannot in any manner or degree be cognized as really 
existent. It is here that the epistemological problem comes 
into closest contact with psychology. 

In the " Siris " Berkeley takes the position that phenomena 
— apprehended each for itself, as it were — cannot yield 
cognition. Their combination through rules or laws is 
necessary to make the actual world intelligible; and the 
corresponding combination of our mental representations 
is necessary to make cognition possible. To be perceived is 
still held really to be; but now we are informed that God is 
the ground of all reality, and that to be a mode of his law- 
abiding spiritual activity is, for things, really to be. Thus 
those things which formerly seemed to constitute collective 



HISTORY OF OPINION 65 

reality are known to be only fleeting phantoms ; God is the 
one true principle of unity, of identity, and of existence. 
Knowledge is, then, the work of intellect or reason. Sense 
and experience make us acquainted with the course and 
analogies of phenomena (natural events); thinking, reason, 
intellect, brings us to the cognition of them and of their 
causes. 

It was, however, the acutely critical activity of Hume 
which began to give to the problem of the philosophy of 
knowledge its more nearly modern and final shape. This 
critical activity was, indeed, most effectively directed 
toward entangling the fundamental concepts of human cog- 
nition in seemingly hopeless contradictions. Nor can we 
agree at all with Riehl 1 in attributing to the Scottish phi- 
losopher the same motif as that which stimulated Kant, — 
namely, to lay the foundations of cognition for practical 
purposes more securely in rational faith. From the nega- 
tive and destructive effort of Hume, however, came a most 
important positive result. It was made clearer that cer- 
tainty, and true knowledge as always implying certainty, is 
not attainable through mere thinking, or concepts. From the 
psychological point of view Hume inquires, much more 
acutely and fundamentally than did Locke, into the "cer- 
tainty " as well as the " origin " of human knowledge. It is 
perhaps not incorrect, then, to speak of Hume as the first to 
develop a critical theory of knowledge out of the Lockean 
psychology of ideas. His supreme effort was to show how, 
admitting that criticism of the content of consciousness must 
lead us to scepticism concerning the reality of our knowl- 
edge, nevertheless the appearance, the conviction, of real 
knowledge arises as a matter of fact. Thus he aims at a 
complete psychological account of the origin of cognition, 
as comprising those beliefs and ontological postulates which 
practically defy the assaults of a theoretical criticism. 

1 Der Philosophische Kriticismus, I., pp. 66 f. ; but compare p. 69. 

5 



66 HISTORY OF OPINION 

In Hume's account of the nature and process of knowledge, 
however, nearly everything is superficial and merely descrip- 
tive ; while the shifty and loose use which he makes of the 
conception of "experience" tends to constant confusion. 
All cognition, he holds, arises from one of two sources, 
and so may be divided into two kinds — cognition arising 
immediately from ideas, and cognition arising from experi- 
ence. 1 In working up — so to speak — the material which 
originates in these sources, Hume emphasizes the imagina- 
tion. According to three points of view, this faculty is 
wont to bind together the passively received ideas. These 
points of view not only form the rules according to which 
imagination actively combines the ideas ; they also give the 
relations which the mind recognizes as existing between 
things. They enter, at least partially, into the constitution 
of that object which rests upon experience, and which can, 
therefore, never attain an unconditioned certainty. These 
three points of view give (1) resemblance, (2) contiguity in 
space and time, and (3) causality, as the relations under 
which this combining activity of imagination makes the 
objects of cognition to appear in the guise of realities. Two 
of these three classes of relations — identity and the rela- 
tions of space and time — consist essentially in a passive 
reception of impressions through the organs of sense. But 
the relation of cause and effect carries us beyond the im- 
mediate perception of the senses, and presupposes a cer- 
tain further process which perfects itself within the mind. 
Here the distinctive part of Hume's theory of knowledge 
comes to the front. This process, which gives objects to 
experience as real and causally related, is a process of 
feeling and imagination, and not a process of reason. It 
is an act of the sensitive part of our nature rather than an 
act of thinking. Imagination, then, as the lively potency 
of ideas in combination, is the faculty in which Hume lays 

1 Treatise, I., iii., section 1 f. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 67 

the foundation of cognition. Memory, sense, intellect, all 
have their basis in imagination, which imparts lifelikeness 
to the ideas, and so constitutes the bridge between mere 
subjectivity and what we consider a real world of things. 1 
This potency itself has its root in a sort of blind emotion on 
which our intellect can throw some light, but which it is 
powerless either to beget or to destroy. Feeling, therefore, 
is shown to be the ultimate foundation of all cognition. 2 

As to limits, it follows that, in the strict meaning of the 
word, our knowledge cannot reach beyond that of numbers 
and magnitudes, and a knowledge of facts. The latter, how- 
ever, may be either knowledge of particular facts or knowl- 
edge of general facts, — that is, such as have to do with the 
properties, causes, and effects of an entire species of objects. 
In one class we may place the results of our investigations 
into history, chronology, geography, astronomy; in another 
class, such studies as politics, and the philosophy of nature, 
consisting of chemistry, physics, etc. Ethics and aesthetics 
are matters of feeling or taste. 3 

In the attempt to validate our knowledge we see at once, 
Hume thinks, that one kind — namely, knowledge immediately 
from ideas — has a perfect certainty; since the relations of 
the ideas admit of face-to-face inspection, or envisagement, as 
it were. Its type is the knowledge of algebra, arithmetic, and 
geometry. But cognition from experience, or a knowledge of 
general facts by means of the principle of causality, has only 
a "moral" certainty. In the last analysis, then, as we see 
again, certainty does not repose at all on rational grounds, 
but on grounds of imagination and feeling. We are com- 
pelled "according to nature" to apprehend, or rather to 
be impressed with certain ideas, rather than others, in a 
peculiarly strong and vivid manner. If we surrender our- 

1 Treatise, L, iii., section 8 f. ; Inquiry, section 5 ; Treatise, I., iv., section 2 f. 

2 Treatise, L, iv., section 7. 

3 Inquiry, section 12. 



68 HISTORY OF OPINION 

selves to a complete trust in intellect, and try to reason 
ourselves into knowledge, we have no other device than the 
choice between false reason, utter scepticism, and a return 
to unreasoning faith. It thus becomes a necessity of practical 
life to cherish certain cognitions. 

Few thinkers have had, more than Hume, the fate of influ- 
encing the reflections of their successors, by way of suggesting 
and stimulating new endeavors and new resulting views, 
while at the same time themselves meeting with almost 
universal and even scornful and vituperative rejection. Hume 
cannot, indeed, be regarded as a serious, though sceptical and 
critical, inquirer after a doctrine of cognition, in the fashion 
of a Descartes or a Kant, or even of his own more immediate 
predecessor, Locke. At the same time it is doubtful whether 
any one in modern times, with the single exception of Kant, 
whom he stimulated and to whom he handed over his central 
problem, has made more important positive contributions to 
a theory of knowledge than those which may be gathered from 
the writings of this philosopher. A modern writer 1 on the his- 
tory of this theory has declared that Hume ends by doing 
away with all important distinctions between human reason 
and brute instinct ; and, indeed, that thus he does away with 
knowledge altogether. The critical part of our investigation, 
however, will make it apparent that knowledge is impossible 
for man without admitting the validating force of those men- 
tal attitudes, or activities, which are closely akin to wdiat we 
so vaguely call " instinct " in the lower animals. And they 
who make knowledge purely a matter of intelle dualizing, and 
who disregard what is contributed by imagination, feeling, 
and will, do away with real knowledge, as men actually have 
it in the concrete, warm, practical life of work-a-day experi- 
ence, quite as completely as does the sceptical theory of 
Hume. Moreover, in concentrating attention upon the syn- 
thetic force of blind imagination, in emphasizing the value 

1 Grimm, Zur Geschichte des Erkeuutuissproblems, p. 557. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 69 

and necessity of unreasoning beliefs, in holding that the 
intellectual use of the causal principle can never of itself 
serve as a bridge between the subjective world and things- 
in-themselves, and in concluding that our choice of certain 
practical postulates will be necessary in the last resort to 
validate our cognitions, what did Hume do but anticipate 
much which Kant subsequently elaborated in detail ? And 
as to manner of saying it, we are obliged not infrequently to 
ascribe the greater merit to the Scottish rather than to the 
German thinker. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Hume's more 
prominent opponents in his own country, the Scottish Realists, 
had not the insight to see what advantages were offered to 
them in their advocacy of ethical and religious truths, if, 
while pointing out the insufficiency of his sceptical analysis 
of the data of consciousness, they made good use of its several 
positive conclusions. And so, the rather, they abandoned 
investigation into a really critical theory of knowledge, and 
made a bid for popular favor in the form of a naive and 
uncritical return to the position of Realism. 

"With Leibnitz the epistemological problem is never pri- 
mary ; the nature of substance is his primary and all-impor- 
tant problem. It is not until about 1684 that we find in his 
writings any clear recognition of the existence of such a 
problem. Both before and after this date, what with Des- 
cartes was a criterion of truth becomes with Leibnitz an 
ontological predicate. Leibnitz was at first one of the most 
consistent supporters of the prevalent view which made 
mathematics the type of all genuine cognition. He was 
jesting, indeed, in his " Specimen Demonstrationum ; " but he 
was seriously of the opinion that philosophical controversies 
ought to end in a philosophy which could state its conclusions 
in as clear and certain a form as that employed by mathe- 
matical calculation. 1 Hence arose his thought of writing 
out the results of reflective thinking in general formulas, 

1 See "De Scientia Universali seu Calculo Philosophico," 1684. 



70 HISTORY OF OPINION 

more geometrico. Hence also his idea of the distinction 
between eternal truths and truths of fact (yerites eternelles 
and verites de fait). The former need no proof, are in- 
tuited as true in themselves, as " first truths " or " prime 
possibilities." 

As to the nature of knowledge, Leibnitz's position is largely 
determined by the leading motive in all his philosophical 
thinking, which is the reconciliation of the mechanical and 
the teleological views of the world, so as to unite the scien- 
tific and the religious interests of his age. To this end the 
important principle was announced and expounded : " Sub- 
stance is a being capable of action." This principle, although 
ontological in its character, could not fail to have a most 
important bearing upon the epistemological problem. By 
it the Cartesian co-ordination of the two attributes of sub- 
tance (extensio and cogitatid) was again abolished : the world 
of consciousness becomes the truly actual ; the world of ex- 
tension is phenomenon. Thus Leibnitz " sets the intelligible 
world of substances over against the phenomena of the senses, 
or material world, in a completely Platonic fashion." x Sub- 
stance becomes a unity in plurality, after the pattern of the 
self-cognizing unitary being of mind ; and space and time 
both belong to mental being. Even the deeper sense and 
justification of the ambiguity into which his doctrine of the 
monads, each one " representing " the world of reality, be- 
trays him, as Windelband declares, has its truth " in the 
fact that we cannot form any clear and distinct idea whatever 
of the unifying of the manifold, except after the pattern of 
that kind of connection which we experience within ourselves 
in the function of consciousness." 

It was mainly the criticism of Locke which compelled Leib- 
nitz to develop a theory of knowledge. Concerning the 
source of knowledge, he attempts a middle way between the 
positions of sensualism and the high-and-dry a priori theory. 

1 Compare Nouveaux Essais, iv., 3, §§ 20 f. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 71 

It is here that his conception of unconscious representations, 
or petites perceptions, arises. 1 The further important dis- 
tinction is made between states in which the mind merely 
has ideas, and those in which it is conscious of having them ; 
that is, between " perception " and " apperception." By the 
latter he understands " the process by which the unconscious, 
confused and obscure representations are raised into clear 
and distinct consciousness, and are thereby recognized by 
the soul as its own, and thus are appropriated by self-con- 
sciousness." The distinguishing activity of the mind as cog- 
nitive, the genetic process which conditions the unfolding of 
the psychical life, is the taking up of perceptions into apper- 
ceptions. 2 The " innate ideas," which with Leibnitz are, 
like the categories of Kant, forms of the functioning of in- 
tellect in its unification of knowledge, are implicit in the petites 
'perceptions, as the involuntary forms of relating activity. 

As to the validating of knowledge, Leibnitz would have us 
distinguish two kinds of intuitive cognitions. Here he fol- 
lows a distinction as old as Aristotle ; but both kinds of 
intuition must possess the Cartesian marks of clearness 
and distinctness. Then in the case of one form, intuitive 
certainty reposes upon the principle of contradiction ; in 
the other form, the possibility guaranteed by perception of the 
actual fact needs still an explanation in accordance with the 
principle of sufficient reason. This distinction has reference, 
however, only to the human understanding. For the divine 
understanding, empirical truths, too, are so grounded that 
the opposite is impossible, although it remains thinkable for 
us. More and more, nevertheless, did this antithesis between 
necessary and contingent truths gain with Leibnitz an onto- 
logical significance. God's being is an eternal truth ; finite 
things are contingent and exist only in dependence upon the 
principle of sufficient reason. 

1 Monadology, sections 14 and 21. 

2 Principes de la Nature et de la Grace, 4 ; Nouv. Ess. II., ix. 4. 



72 HISTORY OF OPINION 

In spite of the unsystematic thinking of Leibnitz, and of 
the fact that an elaborate and self-conscious theory of cog- 
nition never was wrought out by him, 1 he strengthened one 
or two truths of immense epistemological importance. With 
him, sensibility and intellect are not separate powers or dis- 
tinct sources of knowledge ; they are at most different stages 
of one and the same living activity with which the monad 
soul represents, and comprehends as it represents, the uni- 
verse within itself. Nor are the world of soul and the world 
of the really existent conceived of as having a " great gulf 
fixed " between them, over which some bridge other than 
the perfect, living activity of the soul itself mast be thrown 
in order to make possible a meeting of these two disparate 
worlds. The monad knows the world because its own self- 
known life mirrors the world ; its activity is the law of the 
world ; its mirroring is no passive reflection of dead and 
inert forms of existence, but an active and voluntary ideating. 
We are not left where Hume left us, to conclude by force 
of a doubtful use of a principle which itself defies the powers 
of reason to comprehend or to justify it ; in its own life the 
soul envisages force ; and the very principle of all concluding 
is itself the ontological law of the life of the really existent. 

The claim has been made that the " Nouveaux Essais " of 
Leibnitz stimulated Kant to build up its doctrine into a sys- 
tem of epistemology. Whether this claim be historically 
true or not, there can be no doubt that the lines which had 
been followed by the problems and answers belonging to the 
philosophy of knowledge, through both Leibnitz and Hume, 
united in Kant. To the lonely thinker of Koenigsberg it was 
given, first among men, to plan and to attempt the critique 
of human cognition in a manner which left the impress of 
his thinking upon both problem and its answer to the end 
of time. 

1 He has himself meditated concerning the foundations of knowledge. " None 
are more important," he says in his " First Reflections on Locke's Essay." 



HISTORY OF OPINION 73 

The space which can be given in this historical sketch to 
the Kantian doctrine of the nature, origin, limits, and criteria 
of knowledge bears no proportion to the importance of this 
doctrine in its influence upon the reflective thinking of mod- 
ern times. Certain points will be briefly stated ; for the 
common proof of which only the painstaking and thorough 
study of Kant can be, in this connection, adduced. For, con- 
trary to the somewhat widely prevalent view, there are few 
great philosophical writings in whose case single citations, 
if not taken in connection with prolonged study of the entire 
circle of the same author's writings, carry so little weight as 
do citations from the three Critiques of Kant. 

First of all, in respect of several most important points 
Kant cannot be reconciled with himself. How so thoroughly 
sincere, patient, and penetrating a thinker could involve him- 
self in such patent inconsistencies, we have probably lost the 
historical clues which might possibly enable us to tell in detail. 
Although the " Critique of Pure Reason " was so long and 
thoroughly excogitated and so quickly written, and although 
all three of the critical masterpieces were written at so late 
a period in the life of their author as to secure for them his 
maturer powers, they bear manifold marks that he had not 
thought himself all the way clearly and thoroughly through. 
Nor is this deficiency surprising in view of the magnitude of 
the task undertaken, of its essentially pioneer character (at 
least in the Kantian form), and of the splendor of the work 
actually accomplished. Nevertheless, the ambiguities and in- 
consistencies of Kant are too numerous and too important 
ever successfully to be denied. 

But, second, the deeper purpose of Kant remained from the 
beginning to the end of his critical era one and the same ; 
and this purpose was, by reconciling the two great schools as 
to the sources of knowledge, and thus by offering an explana- 
tion of the nature of knowledge which should have " sun- 
clear " truth for every one who once really understood it, to 



74 HISTORY OF OPINION 

set irremovable limits to the pretence of knowledge and to 
clear the ground from it, in order to make room for the 
practical postulates of the life of conduct and of religion. 
The " Critique of Practical Reason," with its discovery of the 
lost truths of Freedom, God, and Immortality, was no after- 
thought with Kant. On the contrary, it was from the begin- 
ning his chief concern. 

Two or three pervasive causes of defect and of inconclusive- 
ness should also be borne in mind in all study of Kant's 
treatment of the epistemological problem. He, as is well 
known, constantly depreciates the influence of psychology 
(or the physiology of mind) upon a satisfactory epistemologi- 
cal doctrine. He wishes to keep his critique independent of 
all doubtful opinion regarding the descriptive and explana- 
tory science of cognitions. It must be constructed of a purity, 
of a universally and necessarily convincing character, which 
shall correspond to the purity and the necessary character 
of the elements criticised. But such an attempt to divorce 
the theory of knowledge from a critical opinion upon mooted 
questions in the psychology of knowledge is impossible of 
execution. The defective psychological basis of Kant is the 
cause of many important fallacies in his critical system. 

Certain na'ive assumptions of Kant — for example, as to 
the satisfactory character of the Aristotelian logic ; as to the 
nature of the so-called a priori concepts in general, and of 
mathematical concepts in particular ; as to a " pure science " 
of physics ; and as to the possibility of setting forth in demon- 
strative form the results of a critical estimate of cognitive 
faculty — are themselves in need of being subjected to the 
severest criticism. To do this, as has often been remarked, is 
to follow our leader in the spirit, if not in the letter of his 
system of thinking. Especially must inquiry be pressed into 
the sources and validity of those ontological postulates which 
are so grudgingly admitted in the " Critique of Pure Reason," 
and so generously but unwarrantably introduced into the 



HISTORY OF OPINION 75 

" Critique of Practical Reason." But about all such dissent 
from Kant we refrain from anticipating further the course of 
our own epistemological discussion. Enough has been said 
to indicate his claims to precedence beyond all predecessors 
or successors in this field. They are : (1) the clear and 
comprehensive way in which he conceives of his problem ; 
(2) the thoroughness with which he employs the critical 
method as a matter of fundamental principle ; (3) the defin- 
itively ethical purpose which, although often for a time ob- 
scured, is really present and dominant from beginning to 
end of the critical inquiry. 

It has often been pointed out that Kant, by his critique of 
human cognitive faculty, intended to mediate between the 
extremes of dogmatism aud scepticism. 1 The position of the 
dogmatist, who regards transcendental truth as attainable 
only by some sort of copying-off process, he overthrows with 
the denial that the universal and necessary quality which 
such truth possesses could in this way be given to it at all. 
But he likewise intends to destroy that kind of scepticism 
which persistently overlooks such universal and necessary 
quality; and this he will do by showing how it is just this 
quality which makes any cognition possible. Thus the 
Kantian theory of knowledge appears before us as a living 
and inner combination of the two opposed theories held, 
respectively, by Wolff and by Hume. Sense and intellect, 
intuition and concept, are both necessary to knowledge. 
Without intuition concepts are empty, without conception 
sense is blind. The real thought safeguarded here is illumi- 
nating, and widely extends our view of the nature and limits 
of human knowledge. But, alas, the truth of the postulates 
which secure the central positions of dogmatic and rational 
realism is nowhere treated by Kant to a thorough criticism ; in 

1 See, especially, his expressed intention " to steer reason safely between these 
two rocks," — the dogmatism of Locke and the scepticism of Hume. (K. d. R. 
V. (2d ed.) Analytic, chap, ii., sec. i. § 14.) 



76 HISTORY OF OPINION 

the " Critique of Pure Reason," it is scarcely even brought to 
mind. Then, too, those suggestions with regard to the entire 
nature and full import of knowledge, with which the scepti- 
cism of Hume is so rich, are not made use of, so as to set 
the author of the three critiques himself free from the limi- 
tations of his own dogmatic rationalizing. For Kant's world 
of reality is cold and formal ; as a world of work-a-day things, 
it lacks heart and will ; and even as a world of conduct in 
pursuit of ideals, its postulates consist rather of a system of 
impersonal laws than of a social community, striving and 
counter-striving with reference to some far-off and dimly 
descried end of attainable good. 

Instructive as it would be, we cannot here follow the scat- 
tered indications which show how the critical philosophy of 
Kant probably took shape in his own mind. The Disserta- 
tion of 1770 is still dogmatic with regard to the problem of 
knowledge ; it assumes uncritically a correspondence between 
the world of concepts and the world of objective real things. 
It was to account for this correspondence, as growing out of 
the inmost nature of cognitive faculty, that the critical phi- 
losophy was undertaken. As we learn from his letters writ- 
ten to Herz in 1772, the "Transcendental Logic" is the 
thing on which Kant worked for ten years or more. The 
answer which comes forth as the product of so much travail 
of intellect is, in brief, this: The judging faculty, with its 
twelve forms of functioning (the a priori concepts of under- 
standing, the categories) produces the world of objective 
real things in the unity of consciousness. This doctrine of 
the absolute dependence of all objects of experience upon the 
constitutional forms of the functioning of intellect, in the 
unit}^ of consciousness, is the Kantian discovery. It was 
upon the basis of this discovery that he himself claimed to 
be the Copernicus of epistemological science. But we shall 
soon be made to see that the way in which its author states 
his great discovery, together with the unwarrantable infer- 



HISTORY OF OPINION 77 

ence which he draws from it, lands us inextricably in a posi- 
tion of sceptical and agnostic idealism. 

In the development of his great epistemological thesis, 
especially in the " Critique of Pare Reason," Kant states the 
problem in several different and somewhat confusing ways. 
Among these, as the most definite proposal for a science of 
science, he affirms that he is aiming at a critique of all knowl- 
edge a priori, — that is, of all those universal and necessary 
factors of knowledge for which definite and concrete experi- 
ences, as such, do not account. " Philosophy requires a 
science to determine a 'priori the possibility, the principles, 
and the extent of all knowledge." 1 Surely the world needs 
to see that " there can be a special science serving as a cri- 
tique of pure reason ; " and that there should precede all 
attempts at metaphysics a " critique of pure reason, its 
sources, and limits, as a kind of preparation for a complete 
system of pure reason." But again, the broader question is 
proposed as the topic for critical investigation : How is expe- 
rience at all possible ? Yet again, the great problem is stated 
in form more deferential to the students of mathematics and 
physics : How is pure science possible, — (a) mathematics, 
and (b) physics ? And why do men so persistently follow the 
attempt at a science of metaphysics, in spite of the un- 
doubted fact that the issue of all such attempt is only ther 
unverifiable appearance of such a science ? Yet once more 
the problem is proposed in that form, nearer to the logician's 
heart, in which Kant so early began to reflect upon it : How 
is it possible that we should frame synthetic judgments which 
have universal and necessary validity ? 

In all the various ways which Kant adopts for stating the 
epistemological problem, there is something common ; and 
this common part comprises the essential puzzle of a critical 
epistemology. For whether I know things immediately by 
sense-perception (or intuition, to use the Kantian term), or 

1 New headings in the introduction to the second edition, No. III. 



78 HISTORY OF OPINION 

know about them by processes of reasoning that rest back 
upon observation through the senses, I am alike persuaded 
that my consciousness is somehow put in possession of the 
truth of things. For knowledge that does not carry convic- 
tion of putting us into possession of the truth of things, men 
decline to call knowledge at all. Experience is attained ; 
science is cultivated and increased ; knowledge grows by 
rising through higher and higher forms of synthesis toward 
an ideal unity ; but all this, from the psychologist's point of 
view, is subjective, is only a succession of more and yet more 
complex and contentful states of consciousness. And yet the 
moment we consider this as knowledge, it is something more ; 
it is the progressively perfect and comprehensive seizure by 
the human mind of the objective universe, the increasingly 
exact and detailed correspondence of the flowing stream of 
man's consciousness with the being and the movement of the 
world of things. How can this be ? Only, Kant answers, 
because this world of objective reality is the construct of the 
cognitive intellect itself, functioning in all its different con- 
stitutional forms, but always in the unity of the one unfolding 
conscious life. 

We shall not attempt to follow Kant into the details with 
which he laboriously furnishes us thoughout the first two 
Parts of the " Critique of Pure Reason." Our positions both 
of consent and of dissent will be taken in the subsequent 
chapters, for the most part without reference to him. Two 
or three main points of agreement and also of divergence may, 
however, be noted in this historical sketch. In his attempt 
at reconciling the claims of the exclusively sensational and 
the exclusively intellectual theories of knowledge, Kant set 
forth more fully than had any one else the complicated and 
combined uses of faculty in all our cognition of external 
things. Such cognition implies, (1) the arousement of the 
sensitive side of mind in response to stimulation from with- 
out (receptivity of sensibility) ; (2) the combining activity of 



HISTORY OF OPINION 79 

image-making faculty (synthesis of imagination — a much 
truer statement of the actual facts of consciousness than all 
talk of mere passive " aggregation" and "agglomeration," or 
even of " association " of sensations and ideas) ; and (3) the 
exercise of judgment in one or more of its various forms of 
functioning. Without justifying the abstract and separatist 
fashion in which this schematizing is wrought out, we, too, 
believe that cognition of things is impossible without the 
so-called faculties of sense, imagination, and intellect, all 
being called forth and developed in their living unity. And 
it is not so much the complicated nature of the Kantian 
intellectual " machine-shop " with which we find fault as it 
is the fact that Kant has left out of his analysis of cognition 
two thirds of the complete whole. 

With Kant's main conclusion, that no analysis of knowl- 
edge is complete which does not recognize the universal, 
the necessary, and the eternal as seated within it, and that 
no reason for all this can be given which fails to reckon 
with the unchanging constitution of the mind, we also find 
ourselves in substantial agreement. Certainl}-, many of the 
details of his doctrine of the a priori nature of cognition can- 
not be maintained. Moreover, his entire conception of this 
element, at least as he sometimes presents it, may fitly 
enough be criticised. But, however particular and concrete 
our experience of this or that act of knowing may be made, 
and however contingent and fleeting the mental phenom- 
enon called knowledge (the " relativity " of knowledge) may 
appear, every " plain man's " consciousness envelops and 
cherishes the seeds of that which is absolute and unchang- 
ing. That this is so, a thorough analysis of all which is 
involved in the most primary cognitions indubitably reveals ; 
and how it can be so, can only be explained if, sooner or 
later in the course of our analysis, we invoke with Kant 
the hypothesis of constitutional forms of functioning for 
that living and developing existence we call the Self, or 



80 HISTORY OF OPINION 

Mind. As the author of the " Critique of Pure Reason " 
himself repeatedly states his conclusion, the accredited 
objective reality of the world of finite physical phenomena 
can be maintained only in connection with the equally 
accredited transcendental ideality of the same world. It is 
the work of mind which makes the world to appear as a 
system of legally related beings. The subjective gives laws 
to the objective. The forms of cognizing faculty set terms 
to our cognition of things. 

But from this positive and relatively indisputable conclu- 
sion of a critical study of knowledge Kant leaps at once, 
and often without a show even of laying the stepping-stones 
of an argument, to a wholly negative and agnostic position. 
Space and time are, without further critical examination, 
declared to be " mere form of our intuition " (blosse Form 
eurer Anschauung) ; " they can never tell us the least thing " 
about that eatfra-mental reality which, however, — as Kant 
himself asserts, either naively or perforce, driven by the uni- 
versal conviction, — lies at the foundation of, and is the 
ultimate explaining cause of the phenomena. 1 Now it is 
plain that unless time has some kind of transcendental 
reality, change cannot be a characteristic of the real world ; 
and if we are not able to affirm or to postulate the reality of 
change, knowledge itself — both as respects its subjective 
content and its trans-subjective reference — becomes impos- 
sible. One way of recovery, however, consists in showing 
that throughout Kant's discussion of both space and time, 
the question as to the psychological origin and nature of 
human mental representations corresponding to these words, 
and the question as to the possibility and the nature of the 
ontological correlates of these forms of mental representa- 
tions, are constantly confused. In this confusion the true 
epistemological problem, as to the nature, extent, and proof 

1 See the " General Remarks on the Transcendental ^Esthetic " in the second 
edition. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 81 

of the truth of our mental representations is almost wholly 
lost out of sight. 

So, too, it is declared by Kant concerning all the consti- 
tutional forms of the functioning of intellect in the knowl- 
edge of things, that they are mere forms of our minding, and 
can never tell us anything about the transcendental reality 
of things. The categories, indeed, seem " to be capable of 
an application beyond the sphere of sensuous objects. But 
this is not the case. They are nothing but mere forms of 
thought." 1 Matter itself is substantia phenomenon. It is 
never known as anything but the intellectualized "phe- 
nomena of the external sense." And as to "the transcen- 
dental object, which is the ground of this phenomenon that 
we call matter," it is a "mere somewhat" (ein Mosses Utwas, 
a nescio quid) of which " we should not at all understand 
what it is, even if some one could tell us. " 2 Such nescience, 
dogmatically asserted and boldly declared forever irremov- 
able, is the negative conclusion of the Kantian critique of 
knowledge; and that, as to the assumed entities which lie 
within the comparatively narrow limits of what is admitted 
to belong to the sphere of knowledge. But when the case 
comes forward for adjudication upon the merits of the 
claims put forth to know the Self, and God, or any invis- 
ible non-sensuous realities, it goes much harder against 
the plaintiff. For in all this realm, according to Kant, 
intellect is lured on by an irresistible dialectic of self-deceit 
(eine Logik des Scheins). And by this he will not allow us 
to suppose that there is meant such an estimate of probabili- 
ties, or balancing of postulates, as often we must accept in 
the "room" of surer cognition, and must make use of as 
man's best substitute for demonstrated truth. But he would 
have us understand that all our choicest structures of rea- 

1 On the " Ground of the Division of all Objects into Phenomena and 
Noumena." 

2 " Of the Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection." 

6 



82 HISTORY OF OPINION 

soning on such subjects are full of the dry rot of innumer- 
able paralogisms and antinomies. Therefore they vanish in 
dust and ashes of this same illusory dialectic, as often as 
the finger of critical inquiry touches them. 

As to the truth of the charge that human reason is involved 
in hopeless "paralogisms" and "antinomies," we shall 
inquire more particularly in a later chapter. And the 
inquiry will show that most, if not all, of these alleged 
paralogisms and antinomies exist in rational consciousness 
only as they are put there by the critic of reason himself. 
Such of them, however, as cannot be quite so summarily 
dealt with will be seen to be premises, or starting-points, 
or incitements, to the outreach after those higher truths 
in the full apprehension of which the very appearance of 
paralogism or antinomy passes away. But what we wish 
now to cry out against involves two quite unwarrantable 
assumptions in the critical philosophy of Kant. The first 
of these is his proposal to limit the extent and the claims of 
experience, with its ripening into full fruitage of assured 
knowledge, to the domain of sensuous cognition. Episte- 
mological criticism itself shows that neither scepticism nor 
agnosticism can maintain any right to dig a ditch between 
the domains of the things of sense and the things of the 
spirit. Or, at any rate, if scepticism digs such a ditch, and 
agnosticism consigns to it the alleged entities of the soul 
and of God, it is quite impossible to keep the choicest curios 
and even the most substantial furniture of the physical 
sciences from being flung unceremoniously into the same 
ditch. The things of science need salvation both by faith 
and by works quite as much as does the soul of man or the 
soul of the World-All. 

But, second, we object to the off-hand assumption that — 
to employ the Kantian terminology — the transcendental 
ideality of things is identical with the transcendental non- 
reality of things. A protest to this crucial estimate of the 



HISTORY OF OPINION 83 

use made of the critical method by the author of reason's 
Critique has already been entered. But the protest needs 
at this point some further explanation and enforcement. 
Let it be granted that all cognition is, as described by 
psychology and handed over to the philosophy of knowledge 
for its profounder analysis, a subjective or ideal affair. Let 
it also be granted that all cognition, regarded as giving us 
a world of objects which are set in fixed and legal relations 
to each other, can only be accounted for by referring it to 
fixed laws, or constitutional modes of the functioning, of 
the cognizing subject, — the human Self or Mind. Let it 
also be granted that no means can ever be discovered, not 
only of knowing but even of imagining in the most shadowy 
way, what are the nature and modes of behavior of so-called 
" things-in-themselves, " — meaning by this realities regarded 
as out of all relation to the cognitive human mind. Still 
the assumption which Kant impliedly finds fault with 
Aristotle and with all his own predecessors for making — 
namely, that the fundamental forms of cognition also some- 
how correspond to the forms of the being of things given in 
cognition — cannot be curtly dismissed. At any rate the 
denial that this correspondence is actual, or that it may be 
actual, cannot be dogmatically made by the critical investi- 
gator of cognitive faculty, who remains faithful to his task 
of analyzing and explaining the entire structure of human 
knowledge. In fact, we shall show that some such assump- 
tion is of the very essence of cognition itself. 

To put the same protest in yet more familiar terms, let us 
suppose that I am told: "All this fair and orderly world 
of so-called material things is but phenomenon of your 
consciousness. Sun, moon, and star, as well as the clod 
beneath the foot and the rose on the bush, and even the child 
or the wife by your side, is, and ever must be, for you, this 
only — your idea." What response is possible but this? — 
"Yes, truly, no object of knowledge exists for me, except 



84 HISTORY OF OPINION 

as I know it to exist ; and for me, there is nothing known, 
without my cognitive activity. " But suppose I am further 
assured that the case is worse than this. All the perma- 
nent and necessary forms of the things you know — what 
they appear to you to be and to do — depend upon the char- 
acter of the tissue, as it were, upon the warp and woof, of 
your cognitive faculty. This knowing of yours is your 
knowing ; it is your finite, relative, and merely human way 
of sensing, imagining, and thinking things. Yes, still 
truly, although, perhaps, not quite so obviously. For I 
know no way of knowing but that which I suppose I share 
in common with my fellow-men. I also suppose, if I should 
ever come into possession of quite other and now wholly in- 
conceivable ways of knowing, that these, too, would still be 
my ways of knowing. And if 1 could not recognize them as 
" my " ways, then this new form of mentality would not be 
what I now call "knowing;" nor could I communicate its 
content to other minds, or even know of the existence of 
such minds, unless I then, as now, supposed that these other 
minds were of like constitution with myself. 

At this point we come upon the fundamental fallacy of the 
Kantian critical philosophy in its effort to accomplish the 
end which it deliberately chose as the highest of its entire 
endeavor. This end is the placing of the life of conduct 
upon sure foundations. "I had, therefore," says Kant, 1 "to 
remove knowledge in order to make room for faith. " " All 
speculative knowledge of reason is limited to objects of 
experience (the world of things regarded as merely phe- 
nomena) ; but it should be carefully borne in mind that this 
leaves it perfectly open to us to think the same objects as 
things by themselves, though we cannot know them. " Thus, 
in the "Critique of Practical Reason," the transcendental 
realities, and the actuality of our non-sensuous relations to 
them, are brought back to our possession, but only as postu- 

1 Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. 



HISTORY OF OPIXION 85 

lates needed for the life of conduct. We may act — nay, we 
are bound to act — as though a world of ethical personalities 
constituted like ourselves were in existence, and as though 
our thoughts about God, freedom, and immortality were 
true; we must not, however, affirm that such realities are in 
any way, or degree, given to us as objects of knowledge. 

Now the inadequate and false psychology which teaches 
the doctrine of a " thought " justifiable about things, which 
neither starts from nor leads to safer foundations of knowl- 
edge, and which separates cognition and belief as though 
they referred to totally different spheres of objects, will be 
exposed in the proper place. What is here necessary to 
emphasize with regard to the outcome of the Kantian critical 
philosophy is this : Human nature cannot be divided into 
mutilated halves, one of which is valid for the cognition of 
sensuous things regarded as mere phenomena, and the other 
of which is valid for the rational apprehension (''thinking 
about," "having faith in," or seizure in anyway — call it 
what you will) of transcendental realities. Human nature, 
as cognitive faculty, is one thing throughout ; its functioning, 
in all spheres, is as a living unity ; its growth, in all stages 
and degrees of development, falls under the principle of 
continuity. The man of science is also the man of good or 
bad moral character and the man of religion or irreligion. 
When knowledge has been, whether rudely or ceremoniously, 
banished by the front door of the temple of reason, it cannot 
afterward, whether pompously or surreptitiously, be intro- 
duced again by the back door concealed beneath covers 
labelled "faith," or "practical postulate." Religion itself 
is an attitude of the whole man, — intellect, feeling, will. 
Knowledge is also an attitude of the whole man, — intellect, 
feeling, will. Mere thinking, or pure faith, is as impotent 
in ethics or religion as it is in science. But there is no 
science that is not of faith, and does not include thinking. 

To return to our critical estimate of Kant, one is forced 



86 HISTORY OF OPINION 

by every interest of logical consistency, however strongly 
adverse other interests may be, either to refuse, almost in 
toto, the conclusions of the " Critique of Practical Reason " 
or thoroughly to revise the conclusions of the "Critique of 
Pure Reason. " Accepting the negative and agnostic outcome 
of the earlier treatise one cannot follow Kant in accepting 
the positive gift to a rational faith that is offered by the later 
treatise. Here is the case of a clear-cut and inescapable 
" either-or. " Believe something and know something, and 
so perchance be saved for this world and for the world to 
come; or else doubt and deny consistently, and manfully 
face your fate in both worlds. 

The indubitable law which Kant finds implicate in moral 
consciousness, in the form of a categorical imperative, he 
states as follows : a " Act so that the maxim of the will can 
always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal 
legislation." There is something painful about the effort 
which the great critic of all cognitive faculty makes to 
expound the " purity " of this law, its perfect freedom from 
all doubtful and empirical data. The argument by which 
he supports this favoritism shown to the practical reason (as 
though, indeed, it were a separate faculty or store-house of 
faculties), and proves its " primacy " " in its union with the 
speculative reason," fails completely. Unless the life of 
conduct is known to be regulated in accordance with actual 
relations of a self-cognizing Self to a system of cognized 
realities, — selves and things, — it is absurd to speak of it 
as "practical" or as having any "fundamental law." But 
if the forms of our cognition are supposed to be merely sub- 
jective, and to give objectivity to their own functioning 
without implicating corresponding forms in the actual rela- 
tions of the, for us, extra-mentally existent, no meaning can 
be given to this fundamental law of the practical reason. 

"The Kantian theory of knowledge, then, of necessity 

1 Critique of Practical Reason, Book I., chap, i., § 7. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 87 

breaks down when it virtually tries to vindicate for the 
metaphysics of ethics and the practical reason what it had 
denied as forever impossible in the functioning of the pure 
speculative reason. We say 'virtually,' for its author 
obviously foresaw that both scepticism and dogmatism 
would, from their respective points of view, attack his 
transcendental ethical system; and he strove hard to defend 
it against the charge of inconsistency. Kant will not at first 
call the practical reason ' pure, ' because he wishes not to 
assume a pure practical reason, in order rather to show that 
it exists. But its existence being shown, he considers that 
it stands in no need of a critique to hinder it from trans- 
cending its limits; for it proves its own reality and the 
reality of its conceptions by an argument of fact. We may 
know the fundamental law of the practical reason ; it bears 
the form of a command, — a categorical imperative. What- 
ever principles are, as necessary convictions, attached to 
this principle are postulates of the pure practical reason. 
Hence we find Freedom, Immortality, and God restored from 
the spaces swept empty by the critique of speculative reason. 
" But Kant's categorical imperative is itself only an imper- 
fect and faulty generalization from empirical data of ethical 
feeling, judgments, and conduct. It is not even an exact 
summary of the testimony, in reality, of human moral con- 
sciousness. Were it a true generalization, however, and 
therefore worthy to be itself called a knowledge, it could be 
shown to be dependent for its validity upon many subordi- 
nate conceptions and convictions which must also have the 
validity of known truths. Otherwise, the categorical im- 
perative itself is condemned as the vague and illusory dream 
of the individual consciousness. Metaphysical postulates, 
other than the three acknowledged postulates of the pure 
practical reason, with that inseparably adhering conviction 
which makes them principles of all knowledge as well as 
principles of all thought, enter into the very substance of 



88 HISTORY OF OPINION 

this categorical imperative. Beings, with powers called 
' wills, ' rationally answering to ends that involve other beings- 
not-themselves but like constituted, and who may be expected 
to act as bound with their fellows in a system of moral 
order — all this, and much more, is involved in the main 
principle of the practical reason. But what an infinity of 
knowledge, made knowledge by the suffusion of rational 
thinking with rational conviction, and in some sort placing 
the mind of the individual face to face with a world of 
reality, is here ! Some of these are the very things of which 
we have been told, as the result of the critical process 
applied to speculative reason, that they may not be spoken 
of as ' known, ' but may only be permitted to thought, with- 
out hope of finding content for the empty form, no matter 
how much we extend the bounds of experience. If these 
postulated entities and relations are not real, then the cate- 
gorical imperative and all it implicates is but a dream — 
nay, it is only the dream of a dream. Must we not then, in 
consistency, either include all — and especially the categor- 
ical imperative with its accessory postulates — under the 
condemnation uttered by consistent scepticism, or else 
retrace the steps passed over in the criticism of speculative 
reason, and discover grounds for a larger ' knowledge, ' with 
its eternal accompaniment of rational faith ? 

" The same fate must await all those theories of knowledge 
which end in scepticism as the result of critical processes. 
Nor is the fate much better of those theories which endeavor 
to save from scepticism certain portions of human knowl- 
edge, while denying in general the possibility of validating 
knowledge as such. The principle of self-consistency is of 
the last importance to reason. It is in fact only one form 
of stating the undying self-confidence of reason. The prac- 
tical exhortation of experience in noetical philosophy is, then : 
Let us by all means maintain a rational consistency." l 

1 Quoted from the author's " Introduction to Philosophy," pp. 186 f. 



HISTORY OF OPINION 89 

It would seem as though one lesson in the philosophy of 
knowledge should be thoroughly learned for all time from 
the example of Kant. Between the outfit of man for a scien- 
tific knowledge of the world of sensuous facts and of their 
connections, on the one hand, and his outfit for the life of 
conduct and religious belief on the other hand, no great gulf 
can be fixed in the name of a consistent epistemology. We 
cannot " make room for faith " by " removing knowledge " ; we 
cannot posit knowledge in spheres where faith has no province. 
We cannot virtually discredit the cognitive faculty of man 
throughout, and then save to knowledge, or to faith, or to 
practical postulates, some specially favored kind of cogni- 
tion. Neither can we undermine the foundations of the plain 
man's consciousness and trust the superstructure of philoso- 
phy's more ponderous and towering speculative thought. 1 

In closing this historical sketch we only mention three 
attempts subsequent to Kant that supply elements to the 
philosophical account of knowledge which his criticism had 
either neglected or relatively depressed. Fichte emphasizes 
feeling — especially moral feeling; Hegel emphasizes the 
dialectical process, or thinking; Schopenhauer emphasizes 
the intuitive attitude of will. But neither of these at all 
approaches Kant, either in the critical spirit or in the 
patient, detailed investigation which the latter brought to 
bear upon the problem of knowledge. 

Fichte based the validity as well as the constitution of 
knowledge upon feeling, as yearning and as certitude. The 
criterion of cognition he makes, not insight, as Reinhold 
had done, but rather an intellectual feeling of certainty 
which cannot be explained. This emotional attitude is in- 
separable from every content of thought, and from all activity 

1 In Mansel's " Limits of Religious Thought " we have an example of the 
futility of trying to secure to faith what has been made impossible or absurd to 
knowledge. In Bradley's " Appearance and Reality " we have an example of 
the futility of trying to secure by speculative thinking what has been made both 
impossible to faith and absurd to knowledge. 



90 HISTORY OF OPINION 

of thinking. It is, however, only immediate and probable, 
not demonstrable; it is to be assumed as necessarily be- 
longing to every Ego. But the highest form of cognition 
is that which arises out of the ethical feeling of responsibil- 
ity, which issues out of a recognized fiat, "Thou shalt." 1 

Hegel takes many important exceptions to the conclusions 
of Kant respecting the possibility, the criteria, and the 
limits of knowledge. To the latter's agnostic outcome he 
opposes the claim by logic (now no longer a "logic of illu- 
sion") to unfold the very nature of Absolute Being, read- 
ing in the inner movement of reason's dialectic, as Kepler 
did in the movements of the planets, the very thoughts of 
God, after Him. "Thoughts, according to Kant," says he, 
"although universal and necessary categories, are only our 
thoughts, — separated by an impassable gulf from the thing, 
as it exists apart from oar knowledge. But a truly objec- 
tive thought, far from being merely ours, must at the same 
time be what we have to discover in things, and in every 
object of perception." These two elements, Being and 
Thought, which Kant had separated, after " denuding them " 
of what they have in their united existence, Hegel would 
bring together again. The conceptions which are analyzed 
out of the process of thinking are the categories of reality ; 
they must be understood as "moments" in a living develop- 
ment. Our knowledge is not merely of the phenomenon. 
The rather "is the phenomenon the arising and passing- 
away of that which itself does not arise and pass away, but 
is in itself, and constitutes the reality and the movement of 
the life of truth." 

But this notable and praiseworthy attempt to overcome 
the agnostic outcome of the Kantian critique, which Hegel 
elaborated, itself issues in positions that are theoretically 
one-sided and practically faulty. Our entire epistemological 
theory cannot safely be resolved into an assumption that 

1 See especially his " Essay on the Grounds of Certainty in Religion." 



HISTORY OF OPINION 91 

when we have discovered the categories, and arranged them 
systematically so as to construct a circle or globus of such 
pure concepts, we have justified our faculty of cognition 
against all the assaults of scepticism and agnosticism, or 
have even succeeded in understanding it. Moreover, the 
ontological postulate, or view of reality which conceives of 
Spirit as possibly having being-in-itself that is not also 
being-for-itself, is full of internal contradictions. Nor are 
the Hegelian antinomies much less dangerous to the validity 
for reality of our thoughts than are the antinomies of Kant. 
Indeed, they may be understood so as to prove more danger- 
ous. For Kant's antinomies, if admitted, only affect a 
limit to human efforts in applying our sensuous imagination 
to subjects with which it cannot rightly claim the ability to 
deal. But the antinomies of the Hegelian dialectic, con- 
ceived of as an essentially true representation of the nature 
of all reality, have their seat in more vital parts of the 
organism of knowledge. And, practically, the history of 
human experience has since shown that Hegel's philosophy 
extols theory too much, and makes it a substitute for 
insight, for instinct and feeling, for morality as conduct, 
and for religion as life. 

There are few passages in any of our modern books on 
philosophy which, when read in the light of the day of their 
writing, seem more timely and suggestive than the latter 
two thirds of the first Book of Schopenhauer's " World as 
Will and Idea." In these pages the author, with much ill- 
concealed scorn of Fichte and Hegel, and with considerable 
invective against their views, propounds his own theory of 
knowledge. His earlier work on the " Four-fold Root of the 
Principle of Sufficient Reason " presents some of the most 
technical parts of his theory in a more systematic form. 
His "Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy" develops his 
views further, though chiefly in a polemical and negative 
way. The positive merit of Schopenhauer's utterances con- 



92 HISTORY OF OPINION 

sists in their bringing forward — if we may venture upon such 
a term — the " biological view " of the origin, nature, and 
criteria of human cognition. Over against knowledge by 
concepts — that knowledge which Hegel identified with the 
very life of reality — Schopenhauer maintains the claims of 
perceptual knowledge, of the immediate seizure, as a matter 
of warm feeling and energetic volition, of the really existent 
relations of things and of events. The Kennen of the artist, 
or the discoverer, or the true saint, is surer knowledge, he 
thinks, and less fraught with erroneous fragments of so-called 
" reason's " manufacture, than is the Wissen of the man of 
science. For intellect, impelled by the will to live, and 
guided by the feeling for what is seemingly good to live by 
and upon, brings us more immediately and surely to the 
heart of reality. And intellect, in Schopenhauer's vocabu- 
lary, is not a reasoning faculty; it is the unreasoned envis- 
agement of the presence and significance of the principle of 
sufficient reason as constitutive of the world of things. 

We need not delay to criticise the extremes to which 
Schopenhauer carries his view of the superior value of per- 
ceptive as compared with conceptual knowledge. It is 
enough at present to say that the marked separation which 
he makes between perception and conception is psychologi- 
cally false. Knowledge is not, indeed, mere thinking; but, 
then, there is no knowledge to be had without, at least, the 
primary activities of thinking faculty. And there is surely 
no structure of knowledge, no growth and systematization of 
cognitions which we can take, even on faith, as representa- 
tive of the world of real beings and real events, without 
elaborate activity of thought. 

We turn now to face for ourselves the different, though 
not distinct problems which enter into the one great problem 
of knowledge. This brief survey of the history of opinion, 
if it does not start us on our way with handfuls of coin 
which will pass current in the markets of the present world 



HISTORY OF OPINION 93 

of thought, may serve to warn us in what direction our 
journey lies, through what thickets and swamps we must find 
a path, and over what mountains we must pass ; as well as 
— surely a no less important lesson — what short cuts we 
must avoid taking with the vain hope thus more easily to 
reach the desired end. But when we have reached this end, 
and look back to find the views we have taken by the way, 
all confirmed by the more profound insights and permanent 
impressions of those who have travelled before us, we shall 
the more confidently believe that the truth of cognition has 
been found as it is justified in the truth of things. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

THE necessity for steadfastly maintaining the proper psy- 
chological noint of view in all reflective consideration 
of the philosophical problem of knowledge has already been v 
sufficiently emphasized. A sketch of the history of opinion 
has shown how light broke in (for example, through Augus- 
tine, Descartes, Hume) upon this problem whenever an 
improved acquaintance with the nature of concrete mental 
phenomena was gained. It has also shown how, even in the 
case of the greatest of all critics of the human faculty of 
cognition, a certain despite of "mental physiology," or of 
the natural history of psychical life, and an excessive 
credulity toward the accepted forms of logic, was productive 
of important errors. Indeed, throughout the historical 
development of epistemological philosophy, defective and 
one-sided views of the psychology of cognition have been 
the chief sources of the fatal extremes of dogmatism and of 
agnosticism. We propose, then, to begin our discussion of 
the epistemological problem by taking the psychological 
point of view. 

What has psychology, as the descriptive and explanatory 
science of mental phenomena, to tell about the origin, the 
nature, and the growth of human cognitive faculty ? Whence 
comes knowledge ? What is knowledge ? and What is the 
course of its development ? These are the inquiries for which 
an answer is now sought from experience ; and for the kind of 
answer now sought, there is no proper recourse but to the 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 95 

concrete, plain, work-a-day facts of human consciousness. 
It is not what the master of the subtleties of scholastic 
logic, or the student of psycho-physics by laboratory methods, 
or the philosophizer already committed to some metaphysical 
dogma thinks about knowledge, — which we now wish to 
know. It is rather just what every one actually experiences 
who affirms, "I know;" and just what they experience most 
fully who have made most advancement in genuine knowl- 
edge. But, of course, it turns out here, as everywhere when 
search is made for the truth of things, that the content of 
life is much richer, and its complexity of method and of 
products much greater than human science is easily able to 
depict or to comprehend. The plain man's work-a-day con- 
sciousness perpetually achieves the end of cognition ; but it is 
too deep for the logician, the psychologist, or the philosopher 
of any school to fathom. And the danger of error from fail- 
ure to include important elements in one's catalogue of the 
"facta," or "momenta," implicate in every "I know" is 
far greater than the risk of putting more into this catalogue 
than life has itself put there. Indeed, the descriptive and 
explanatory history of cognition comprises no less than the 
whole of psychology. 

As to the Origin of Knowledge it is possible to speak 
clearly only after the meaning given to the term has been 
strictly defined. That psychological fact which induces the 
search after its own begetting and birthright becomes an 
actual matter of experience only when the records of the 
exact history of its sources have been lost beyond the possi- 
bility of complete recovery. Men find themselves already 
well advanced in the growth of cognitive faculty before they 
begin to ask whence this faculty with its resulting products 
has arrived. And after a critical inquiry into origins is 
undertaken, both the inquiry and the summing up of its re- 
sults in recorded experience must take shape either as knowl- 
edge or as the pretence of knowledge. Unless I already know, 



96 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

with faculties developed far beyond the point when the first 
datum fit to be called " knowledge " arose in consciousness, I 
cannot intelligently raise the question, Whence comes knowl- 
edge to me and to other men ? If examination is made of 
the inferior cognitive faculty of the lower animals, or of the 
earlier forth-puttings, the budding cognitions of the human 
infant's mind, the examination and its conclusions can 
assume only those points of view which belong to an adept in 
the use of cognitive faculty. Now, while this fact does not 
by any means debar us from forming justifiable impressions 
as to the manner in which we ourselves, and all other men, 
begin the life of cognition, it does limit the nature and 
restrict the proof which is accessible to us by immediate 
observation of all the actual processes of cognition. 

There is one meaning to the word "origin" which is cer- 
tainly unwarrantable and useless in the effort to throw light 
upon the epistemological problem. Yet, alas, this meaning 
has been in the past most frequently, and is now in certain 
quarters most persistently, employed. The fallacy involved 
in the figures of speech which are commonly employed by 
those who undertake the research into the origins of things 
physical condemns, for their utter inadequacy, all the so- 
called " sensational " theories of knowledge. These theories 
find their explanation of the beginning of knowledge in the 
assembling somehow of sensations and of the revived images 
of past sensations, called ideas, under the well-known laws 
of association. It is assumed by them all that when mental 
states, or forms of the functioning of mind — even including 
those elaborations called cognitions — are described " content- 
wise," they are adequately described. It is also assumed 
that the particular content called a " sensation, " either in its 
original or transformed character as an "idea," exhausts the 
entire catalogue of mental contents — the whole life of mind, 
even when described "content-wise." Now the peculiar fal- 
lacy of which all sensational theories are guilty in this con- 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 97 

nection is shared by them with the greater part of the 
modern science of origins, as this science is taught by 
the current biology. This is the fallacy of so working the 
principle of continuity as to do away with essential differ- 
ences by substituting for their honest and frank recognition 
and explanation a connection between them, often conjec- 
tural, under the forms of time or of causal influence. A 
similar fallacy afflicts sorely all the psychological sciences, 
— the sciences of man both as an individual and in all the 
various forms of his relations and development as a race. 
It is the very bone and flesh of the hypothesis customarily 
applied to these sciences. 

In biology one at least knows what real transactions are 
referred to, if one hears of the " origin " of the individual 
animal from an impregnated egg, or of the " origin " of the 
fully developed plant from a germ or seed. In the case of 
the animal an actually existent cell from the male parent 
has fused with a cell from the female ; and out of the product 
of this fusion — though in most marvellous and mysterious 
fashion — has followed a growth which results in the full 
complement of organs possessed by the adult animal, as 
united anew in the offspring. In the case of the plant the 
process is markedly similar. So, too, one knows what is 
meant when the chemist affirms that water has its origin 
in the union of oxygen and hydrogen gases ; or, conversely, 
that these gases may have their origin in the chemical 
analysis of water. But only a most shallow student of 
biological science considers that a complete account has 
been given of the origin of the adult by describing the physi- 
cal and chemical properties of the egg. For, besides such 
more obvious factors in the scientific account of the genesis 
and development of animal organisms, there are many others 
which must come into the complete account. These may be 
roughly divided into two classes: such as take the individual 
animal out into what is known of the beings, forces, and 



98 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

laws of the "cosmos " at large; and such as end in the unex- 
plained mystery of the " nature " of the individual animal. 
In the case of the drop of water, too, there is something 
vastly more in the compound than can be accounted for by 
rehearsing the marriage service over oxygen and hydrogen 
gases as a merely numerical formula of 1000 to 2002. 

But the case of the student of psychological origins is nota- 
bly different from that of the student of biology or of chem- 
istry. For the psychologist there exist no real factors, or 
actual antecedents, which he may observe in their isolation, 
or understand previous to their combination or while they 
are in actual process of combining. Strictly speaking, there 
are no sensations, simple or complex, and either actually 
existent or representatively existent in the imagination and 
thought of the observer. So-called sensations are themselves 
the product of the analytical activity of self-cognition, — quite 
impotent, therefore, to establish any claim to be or to act of 
themselves, as though separable from the cognitive process it- 
self. To speak of the origin of knowledge from a combination 
of sensations is, then, to deceive one's self with a misapplied 
figure of speech. Sensations are not entities, even of the 
psychological order; and if they were entities, they are not 
the kind of entities to offer, by any combination, in however 
large quantities and high degrees of value, an adequate ex- 
planation for the origin of knowledge. 

What has just been said of sensational theories of knowl- 
edge is also true of all strictly ideational theories. The 
psychological doctrine of Herbart, .especially as it came to 
its ripest fruitage in the later work of his distinguished pupil, 
Volkmann von Volkmar, has been of great value to modern 
psychological science. Its value lias been increased rather 
than diminished by its frank avowal of the need of metaphys- 
ical standpoints and by its tenacious defence of the propo- 
sition that mental phenomena are all to be considered as 
" forthputtings " of the unfolding life of mind. But in its 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 99 

doctrine of judgment, and of feeling, and of will, — and so 
of all these as constituting two thirds or three fourths of 
cognition, — its weakness is most manifest. Cognition can- 
not, either for its origin, or for its nature, or for its growth, 
be considered as completely explained by any theory of ideas. 
It is true that the later developments of the Herbartian 
doctrine, especially as set forth by Yolkmann, include under 
the term " idea " various complex forms of mental functioning ; 
true also that they emphasize, in a commendable way, the 
active rather than the passive aspect of ideation-processes 
(Vbrstellen rather than Vorstellung or Das Vorgestellt). 
They thus succeed both in getting a richer content into their 
description of mental phenomena, and in regarding these 
phenomena " function-wise " as well as u content- wise " much 
more faithfully than do the advocates of the sensational 
school. But we must not be deceived by increased subtlety 
of analysis and more generous use of terminology. As will 
be made clear by the detailed and critical examination of the 
nature of cognition, every mental positing corresponding to 
the words " I know" implies something far more than can be 
explained by combination of ideation-processes. 

As to the possibility of a purely biological or physiological 
explanation of the origin of knowledge, the case is so hope- 
less that it is scarcely worth while to argue it. For those, 
however, who incline to confuse such an explanatory theory 
with another contention quite different, we have presented 
the subject in another place. 1 

Thus far negatively. In some sort, however, appeal may 
successfully be made to modern psychology to render an 
account of the origin of knowledge. Such an appeal may 
rightfully expect an answer in both of two ways. Psycho- 
logical analysis can exhibit those manifold factors which may 
be discerned by the self-cognizing mind as characterizing its 
activities on the way to, or after it is regarded as already hav- 

1 See the author's " Philosophy of Mind," pp. 98 f., 115 f., 229 f. 



100 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

ing reached, the mental attitude called cognition. Of course, 
by the term " factors," in all such connection, one must not 
understand separable entities, or even actual separable ele- 
ments or momenta of the complex mental state. But the 
trained self-consciousness of every man enables him to ob- 
serve with concentrated attention now one and now another of 
the so-called faculties of mind, or forms of psychical function 
ing, as they are concerned in the living unity of an act of 
knowing. This analysis of self-consciousness may be made, 
by exercise and study of mental phenomena, by growth in 
depth and in quickness of insights, more rich in its response 
to the call for a true picture of actuality. The actuality of 
cognition belongs to every human consciousness as an incon- 
testable fact ; but the analytic discovery and portrayal of this 
actuality is a matter of combined science and tact, as is every 
other matter of psychic life. And like all matters of psycho- 
logical science, this study may be enriched by observation of 
others and by the experimental method. 

Not only the so-called psychic factors, but also the prin- 
ciples according to which these factors combine, may be 
made the subject of inquiry. In the actual process of cog- 
nition the different forms of mental functioning (which are 
the realities corresponding to the word " factors ") rise and 
fall in extensity and intensity ; they come forward and take 
the lead, so to speak, or retreat into the background of a 
relative obscurity and insignificance. In knowing anything, 
for example, I am at one instant more obviously sensing it 
through this, and at another instant through that, avenue of 
sense. In other words, the particular " Thing " is now to 
me a thing chiefly of sight ; now of touch and the muscular 
sense ; now, perchance, of taste or of hearing. But again, 
the same thing, in the same complex process of cognition, 
is rather known by being judged to belong to this or that 
class of things, or by being thought about as standing in 
this or that relation to me and to other things. And yet, 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 101 

anon, the same thing is more felt and cognized as opposed 
to my will, — a forceful thing, that will not what I will, and 
that reveals itself as a resistance to the forthputtings of my 
embodied Self. In all this living flux of my conscious life, 
this stream of consciousness I call my cognizing Ego, with 
the rise and fall of the varying shades of sense, judgment, 
feeling, and will, the object there, the " real Thing," becomes 
known to me. 

In the meaning, then, of giving a descriptive history 
(accompanied by certain meagre and tentative explanatory 
remarks) of the different factors discovered in what is called 
a cognition, and of the way these factors behave with refer- 
ence to each other and to the Self, the origin of knowledge 
may be said to be explained. 

But by the word " knowledge " (" yours " or " mine," or 
u his," or that of the race) men generally intend to designate 
something more than a. single process of cognition. It is, 
indeed, only this single process, and usually only a part even 
of any single process, which can be made the subject of intro- 
spective or experimental study. But in some sort, the mental 
doing and achieving which ends in the judgment " I know " 
does take place under the mind's immediate gaze ; it may 
be self-consciously known to be going on. Yet even if this 
analysis were far more certain and comprehensive than it is, 
no one would think of claiming that it alone could result in a 
science of the origin of knowledge. The origin of knowledge 
may, then, in a certain way be understood by adding to our 
descriptive history and tentative explanation of the single pro- 
cesses of cognition a somewhat similar history and explanation 
of the enlargement of the content of knowledge and the growth 
of the faculty of knowing, in the individual and in the race. 
Here memory must be summoned to the front ; for it is de- 
signed to study our own processes of cognition in their rela- 
tions to each other, as they have actually occurred in time. 
But memory of our own past states will take us only a little 



102 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

way here. Hence the value of comparative psychology for a 
mastery of the descriptive history of cognition. On the gen- 
eral assumption (which is sufficiently well verified) that our 
own earliest mental states, the forerunners and preparers of 
the fuller activities of adult cognition, corresponded in kind 
to such of our present mental states as appear to have least 
of the more prominent cognitive factors, we may employ in- 
trospection still further in studying the origin of knowledge. 
For example, I may give an attentive study to my own states 
of reverie and dreaming (when I am more exclusively bound 
under the laws of the association of ideas), or of absorption in 
sense or in pleasurable or painful feelings (when I am eating 
with a good relish, or suffering from toothache, or enjoying 
music), or of abstraction (when I am more " purely " thinking.) 

It appears, then, that the stages through which the growth 
of cognitive faculty passes in the life of the individual and of 
the race, may be made the subject of more or less successful 
investigation ; and something may also be confidently asserted 
as to the laws which control this growth. In some sort all 
this may properly be called a study of the " origin of knowl- 
edge." But here again one must not be deceived by the 
charms of any particular evolutionary hypothesis, whether 
as applied to the development of the individual or of the 
race, into supposing that cognition can be wholly accounted 
for, as respects its sources, by giving the detailed account of 
that which is not cognition. So often as this is done, the 
mystery of the actual achievement of cognitive faculty is 
explained (sic) by being overlooked or buried beneath a 
heap of rubbishy figures of speech. 

The only answer, then, which can be given to the inquiry 
after the psychological " origin " of knowledge falls most 
fitly under the titles, the " nature " and the " growth " of 
knowledge. In other words, when that has been told which 
can be told in response to the questions : What is cognitive 
faculty, regarded as activity and as resultant ? and, What are 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 103 

the successive stages in which it unfolds itself? — nothing 
more is to be said about the psychological genesis of this 
faculty. At no step in these inquiries should it be supposed 
that anything is added to the science of cognition by identi- 
fying in thought things which are not actually the same ; and 
a merely genetic and psychological study of the phenomena 
will never suffice for the solution of the epistemological prob- 
lem upon this point. 

Several most important corollaries follow from what has 
just been said ; and these concern both the method of psy- 
chological study which is fitted to present the epistemological 
problem, and also the character and extent of that which our 
study can hope to accomplish. A certain prejudice, not 
altogether wrong and unnatural, exists in these days against 
the refinements and subtleties of analysis. But a theory of 
knowledge, from its very nature, requires, chiefly and almost 
exclusively, refinement and subtlety in analysis. The entire 
science and philosophy of cognition, the complete mastery of 
the secrets of cognitive faculty, is necessarily a matter of 
thorough analysis and of sound discursive reasoning upon a 
basis of such analysis. Who will tell us all that can be told 
about the mystery of the conscious processes of every human 
being when he reaches the mental attitude expressed by the 
words " I know " ? Who will furnish the theoretical justifica- 
tion for that trust in the human mind which it belongs to 
human nature, however often and sorely baffled, continually 
to cherish ? Who will set the theoretical limits to scepti- 
cism, and administer the convincing theoretical rebuke to 
agnosticism, for the rational comfort of doubting and despair- 
ing souls ? Only he who can most fully and convincingly 
expound the length and breadth, the heighth and depth, of 
man's power to know, and the extent and strength of the 
grasp of this power upon reality. But this end can be 
reached only by analysis. Certain partially successful prac- 
tical refuges may indeed be offered for extreme scepticism 



104 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

and agnosticism. But the only refuge which can serve the 
persistent inquirer must be found in a better understanding 
of what it is to know, and of all that every act of knowledge 
implicates. The path to this refuge is an analytical and dis- 
cursive exploration of cognitive faculty itself. 

From the same statement of the facts in the case we derive 
a certain set of limitations to our expectations concerning 
what we may reasonably hope. This consideration of limits 
is important, both in a theoretical and in a practical way. 
For depressing scepticism and despairing agnosticism are most 
often reactions from the breaking-down of unwarrantable 
expectations or unreasonable hopes. It cannot be too con- 
stantly borne in mind, then, that no standpoint outside of 
reason itself is attainable for the more secure criticism of 
reason. The self-limiting nature of sceptical inquiry into 
the validity of knowledge, and the self-destructive nature of 
the agnostic conclusion to terminate this inquiry, will be 
shown in due time. But it is well at the outset to remind 
ourselves that we, as critics of cognitive faculty, cannot claim 
any point of vantage which towers above the cognitive faculty 
itself. The philosopher may, perchance, tell the plain man 
more than he can himself discover of the content and the 
meaning and the implicates of the plain man's mind ; but 
what the analyst sees, and even what he imagines he sees, is 
all contained within the known or the imagined horizon of 
their common consciousness. Special gifts at dialectic, claims 
of intellectual intuition, visions of the Platonic ideas, lofty 
or profound insights into the mysteries of the transcendental 
realm, are all of account here only as they can justify them- 
selves and their deliverances at the bar of that reason in 
which all men have a share. The critique of cognitive fac- 
ulty neither has, nor can attain, a point of view outside of 
the domain ruled over by that faculty. Flights sunward are 
limited by the sustaining power of that very atmosphere above 
whose dust and smoke-begrimed regions they rise. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 105 

Again, no certification of knowledge is possible that is not 
somehow found actually existent within the process of cogni- 
tion itself. If scepticism is self-limiting, and the extreme of 
agnosticism self-destructive, it is equally true that the positive 
and dogmatic resultant of analysis is self-limiting also. The 
process of certifying stops somewhere ; it cannot, of course, 
go on forever. And where this " process " stops as a process, 
what other kind of certification can be either expected or 
actually found ? Plainly, the answer to this question leaves 
us with some total attitude of mind, or in face-to-face recog- 
nition of certain implicates of all cognitive processes, which 
do not admit of any certification lying outside of that which 
they themselves possess. In other words, critical analysis of 
the nature of cognition, with a view to certify it, ends in the 
discovery of aspects, or factors, or implicates, of every exer- 
cise of cognitive faculty, which are self-certifying. The in- 
quirer after certitude observes or infers his way up to this 
point, and then finds certitude in reposing there. The de- 
tailed exposition of this truth is the most important and 
difficult part of every philosophical theory of knowledge. 
But at the outset it promises a saving of time and strength, 
which will otherwise be wastefully and even foolishly em- 
ployed, to recognize the absolutely inevitable character of this 
truth. If by analysis, a fundamental and universal position 
of certitude belonging to every act of genuine cognition is 
discovered^ we cannot be asked to certify this feeling of cer- 
titude by discovering another position of a similar kind. If 
by analysis we find that judgment in cognition is of its very 
nature, a positing in reality of the object of cognition, we 
cannot be required to justify this judgment by a process of 
reasoning that could itself only repose on judgments of like 
character. Dispute and argument cannot serve as grounds 
for that which is assumed in all proposal to dispute and to 
argue, invariably and with an absolute necessity. They who 
will not be satisfied until they have certified, in infinitum, all 



106 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

certitude would found the world of human reason as the East- 
Indian myth founded the world of matter. But the world of 
human reason is a self-supporting and self-sufficient cosmos, 
rather than a flat and level expanse, resting on the back of an 
elephant, supported by a tortoise, — and so on. 

Or, to bring somewhat the same truth before us in a state- 
ment even more naively adapted to make it self-evident, no 
other kind of knowledge is possible, or even conceivable for 
us men but human knowledge, — or just such knowledge as all 
men know themselves to have. This is a primary and invin- 
cible epistemological postulate. The picture of a divine in- 
tuition that should have no thought in it, as Kant attempts 
repeatedly to sketch the picture, is as purely imaginary as the 
conceit of a dialectical unfolding of concepts that never come 
to a resting-place in any intuitive knowledge. But both are 
alike due to the unwarrantable hypostasizing of a one-sided 
recognition of the work actually done by all human cognitive 
faculty. The effort to exalt cognition by stripping it of some 
of the fundamental qualifications which belong to it in a living 
human experience, and then to set it over against its actual 
self as a something worthy of envy by itself, if only it could 
be attained, always ends in the very opposite of what is in- 
tended. If our human knowledge cannot be shown to include 
some sure envisagement, so to speak, or trustworthy mental 
representation of the being and doings of the Really Existent, 
then no other knowledge more inclusive can ever be the object 
of our striving or even the subject of our inquiry. 

Let us, then, from the beginning, renounce all vague long- 
ings and vain efforts after the absurd and the impossible. It 
is not to dehumanize ourselves by a self-apotheosis that we are 
called. But, on the other hand, it is not to annualize ourselves 
by reducing man's birthright to the limitations of a merely 
sensational and ideating consciousness. Epistemology does 
not propose to enter upon the manufacture of knowledge, by 
putting inferior raw stuffs into an empty receptacle and taking 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 107 

out the finished product as the resultant of their combination, 
before a bewildered crowd of spectators. The mystery of cog- 
nition will certainly not be diminished, it will very likely be 
not a little increased, by what the most accurate and thorough 
analysis can accomplish. Nor can the seeker after a critical 
theory of knowledge secure or maintain any standpoint supe- 
rior to that of the multitude of rational souls, from which to 
view the nature, or to discover the certification, of cognitive 
faculty. What he finds of the supernatural must be imma- 
nent in, or implicate within, the nature of all mankind ; what 
of the divine must still be clothed in recognizable human garb. 
Or, to drop all figures of speech, the thorough analysis and 
reflective discussion of the cognitive faculty of man — how it 
behaves, how it grows, what is implied in it by way of feeling, 
faith, envisagement, postulate, or other form of implicate — 
is all that the psychology and philosophy of knowledge can 
rightly aim to accomplish. 

The details of the first introspective and experimental an- 
alysis, and the resulting descriptive history of human cogni- 
tion belong to psychology. 1 As to the Nature of Knowledge, 
psychologically considered, it will then be necessary here 
only to call attention to the following series of propositions, 
which form the basis of further reflective thinking upon the 
epistemological problem. 

All cognition is consciousness. The reverse proposition, 
that all consciousness is cognition, by no means follows. 
What consciousness is in general, or what is any particular 
form or modification of consciousness, cannot, of course, be 
known without assuming the activity of self-cognizing faculty. 
This amounts to saying that without self-consciousness there 
can be no science of knowledge ; and that the systematic study 
of the nature, growth, and implicates of knowledge demands 
highly developed activities of the self-conscious order. There 

1 For these details see the author's " Psychology, Descriptive and Explana- 
tory," especially chapters xiv., xv., xvi., xx., xxii. 



108 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

is abundant indirect evidence, however, that all the very earli- 
est, most of the earlier, and many of the later modifications 
of the " stream of consciousness," neither of themselves 
amount to cognition, nor do they terminate in a mental atti- 
tude which can properly be called an act, or fact of cognition. 
But, on the other hand, a continuous stream of cerebrations, 
a psychic act or factor, or an inference that is not in and of 
consciousness, certainly cannot have the epithet cognitive 
attached to itself. The extremest form of a mind-stuff the- 
ory, the older or newer forms of the Leibnitzian hypothesis, 
which assume an unbroken series of consciousnesses, varying 
from zero to the unity of developed apperceptive self-con- 
sciousness whether correlated or not with physical and neural 
aggregates, have no bearing on the problem of epistemology. 
The conception of " unconscious knowledge " remains not only 
untenable, but even impossible to frame. One may be par- 
doned, perhaps, for saying " I must have felt (or imagined or 
inferred) it to be so without being fully conscious at the 
time ; " but one cannot say " I knew it, and yet I was 
unconscious when I knew. ,, 

Whatever may be held as to the possibility of certain lower 
forms of psychic manifestation being correlated with the 
functioning of the sporadic ganglia and spinal cord of the 
lower animals, or with the different parts of those worms 
which allow of subdivision without loss of animation, or 
with the different micro-organisms, or even with the life of 
the plants, cognition appears to require a highly elaborate 
nervous organism crowned by a cerebral development. 
In Schopenhauer's careless language, knowledge of under- 
standing is only the phenomenon of the self-objectifica- 
tion of Will in the brain. It is not necessary to occupy 
ourselves with the crudities of this, or of any other material- 
istic hypothesis on this subject. But the biological connec- 
tion of that most elaborate physical organism, the brain, with 
the life of conscious cognition is full of meaning. The white 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 109 

blood-corpuscles can do certain wonderful and purposeful 
things ; and so can the cilia on a bit of skin from the throat 
of the frog. So can microbes, and harmful germs, and helpful 
germicides, innumerable. How much of such doing, which 
seems full of a sort of knowing (a Kennen, if not a Wisseri), is 
really dependent on or is, at least, correlated with " momenta " 
of consciousness, even if they are not organized into a stream 
of consciousness, one cannot very confidently affirm. But 
when we approach an act of cognition, properly so-called, we 
have long since passed beyond the border-land of the uncon- 
scious. To speak of unconscious knowledge would be no less 
absurd than to speak of " wooden iron." Just as the physi- 
cal basis of all psychic life reaches its culmination, puts forth 
its supremely noble blossom in the convoluted hemispheres 
of the human brain, so does the life of consciousness reach its 
supreme manifestation, its crowning achievement in those 
forms of consciousness, called acts of knowledge, which 
depend upon the employment in their integrity of these 
hemispheres. 

All cognition is a conscious process, a process in con- 
sciousness. But not only has each act of cognition a con- 
scious character; it has also a becoming of its own character; 
it is a coming to a peculiar kind of consciousness. The 
experimental demonstration of this truth, too, is complete. 
Reaction-time is prolonged in some sort of proportion to 
the extent, the certainty, and the clearness of the cognitive 
process which it measures. If mere sensation is called for, 
and signalled as arising in consciousness, then the reaction- 
time is relatively short. If sensation, more accurately 
discriminated as to quantity or quality by comparison with 
a memory-image is demanded, then reaction-time is more 
prolonged. But if the full-orbed and perfected act of cogni- 
tion, resulting in judgment that posits a relation between 
self and its object, with the essential accompanying seizure 
of will and feeling of certitude, is demanded, then still more 



110 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

time must be allowed for the achievement of so elaborate a 
conscious process. 

Moreover, each act of cognition, so far as its time-rate, its 
order of the succession in fusion of different psychic factors, 
and its richness, clearness, and distinctive characteristics 
of content are concerned, is an individual affair. No two 
human beings are alike in these particular features of their 
cognitive faculty. Habits and "types," in multiform combi- 
nations of the different kinds of sensation, and of intellec- 
tive, affective, and voluntary activity, characterize the 
individuality of every person. They also impart individual- 
ity to each exercise of the complex faculty of cognition. To 
know this or that thing, even by the most immediate and 
rapid of observations, is a different affair for different 
minds ; a different affair also for the same mind at different 
moments of its experience. The unceasing and infinite 
variation of that species of mental states which we call 
cognitions shows that they are all, properly speaking, not 
mere states or statical conditions of consciousness, but con- 
scious processes or changing modes of the conscious pro- 
cedures of psychic life. Special experiment and ordinary 
experience alike prove that, within limits, the introduction 
of new elements, whether arising through external stim- 
ulus or from internal sources, and with or without con- 
scious volition, changes the character of the cognitive issue; 
this it does by affecting the "stream of consciousness." 
After it gets started, so to speak, we can disturb, divert, 
modify the exercise of cognitive faculty so as to alter more 
or less profoundly the concluding judgment which marks 
the attainment of knowledge. Cognition regarded as result- 
ant depends upon the influences which determine the cogni- 
tion regarded as a process ; but it is also a matter of sure 
proof that cognition is itself a process having a certain 
termination, appropriate or perhaps peculiar to itself. 

This truth regarding the psychological nature of every gen- 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 111 

uine act of knowledge can be brought clearly before self- 
consciousness in cases where the conscious process is at the 
same time slowly evolved, yet vivid and picturesque, and is 
watched and remembered with interest and accuracy of intro- 
spection. For example : I am standing at the street's corner, 
waiting for a car and looking straight before me, but ab- 
sorbed in thought about a lecture to be given later in the day 
in a neighboring city. Suddenly the stream of reflective 
consciousness is interrupted. All at once I become con- 
scious of an obscurely perceived (but, by no means, clearly 
apperceived) human figure which seems struggling toward 
the focus of attention in the field of consciousness, of a feel- 
ing which is a mixture of pleasure in recognition and of 
perplexity as to the propriety of recognition, and of a dis- 
tinct motor tendency to bow and to raise my hat. This 
complex mental "state" (which is not itself, however, a 
status, a stationary experience) almost immediately fuses 
with another state in which the perception-content has more 
clearly defined itself — sensation-wise and memory-wise ; 
now the feeling has become a mixture of disappointed expec- 
tation and of lingering though fast failing doubt ; and the 
motor consciousness is chiefly that of a strongly inhibited 
tendency to move the arm upward and to stare at the ap- 
proaching form with inquiring eyes. And, finally, the psychic 
process that started off on the way to an act of cognition 
which would have been recognition of a friend, with its ap- 
propriate affective and motor accompaniments or commingled 
factors, has become a completed cognition of an object clearly 
differentiated from the object expected, a self-recognition of 
the just previous mistaken attitude of the mind toward its 
object, with the appropriate changes in the affective and 
motor accompaniments. To use the language of every-day 
life : At first I saw the approaching person very dimly, but 
half-unconsciously fancied it was my friend, felt pleased, 
and was about to raise my hat and extend my hand. Then I 



112 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

saw more clearly, though not with perfect distinctness, 
doubted my just rising judgment, experienced a reversal of 
feeling and a check to the motor activities which I had 
begun. Finally, I clearly and indubitably saw that the per- 
son was not the one I had at first imagined, then judged with- 
out further hesitation, U I do not know you," and deliberately 
suppressed the rising tide of friendly feeling and the actions 
which were to give it expression. All this, however, occu- 
pied not more than a second and a half. The total expe- 
rience was not three successive and separate states, or statical 
conditions, of consciousness; it was one living process, 
terminating in knowledge. Physiologically described, what 
probably happened was this. The cerebral hemispheres, in 
which the physical basis of cognitive consciousness is laid, 
were preoccupied with those molecular changes which are 
the conjectural correlate of the process of thinking rather 
than of sense -perception. The lower ganglia and centres 
of the brain responded promptly and effectively — accord- 
ing to the power which in them lies — to the sensory 
impulses thrown in upon them along the nerve-tracts of 
vision. Certain ideation and motor responses habitually 
connected with similar impulses were awakened in these 
lower centres; and the impulses were started down the 
motor-tracts. But as these sensory impulses, in the succes- 
sive fractions of the second and a half rose, spread over, 
and mastered the higher centres of the brain, the character 
of the ideation and motor responses became changed. The 
new form now given to the latter overtook the earlier motor 
impulses and inhibited them before they could get the 
muscles well under way. Psychologically described and 
explained, however, we have here a cognitive process, going 
on to its completion in that mental attitude which is called 
judgment, with its consciously recognized content, its feel- 
ing of certitude and other affective moods, its support and 
outcome in volition as engaged in attention or otherwise, — 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 113 

all under the mind's eye. In one word, we have the birth 
of cognition, self-consciously known as a conscious process. 

All cognition, moreover, is objective consciousness, or 
awareness of an object. As to the ultimate nature and sig- 
nificance for man's intellectual, moral, and religious life, of 
the object given to consciousness in cognition, it is the busi- 
ness of the appropriate philosophical disciplines to inquire. 
But at present it is simply the objective nature of cognition 
as displayed in indisputable psychological facts, upon which 
emphasis is laid. Unless the process of consciousness be- 
comes objective, unless the stream of consciousness termi- 
nates in a "position" taken and regarded by the conscious 
subject, as corresponding to the nature and behavior of the 
known object, we have no right to speak of it as knowledge. 
Mere sensation, mere belief, mere association of ideas, mere 
thinking, may perhaps be conceived of, if not actually 
experienced, as merely subjective; but knowledge cannot 
even be so conceived of, or thought about. By its very 
nature it is always objective. Conversely, whatever state, 
condition, activity, or process, in consciousness is capable of 
being considered as merely subjective, such state, condition, 
activity or process is never to be called "knowledge." 
Sensation, belief, association of ideas, thinking, may all be 
considered as constituents of cognition; without them all, no 
cognition were possible. But merely as such, whether single 
or in combination, without acquiring by the combination 
something more than their inherent subjective quality, they 
cannot be identified with cognition. Indeed, it is this pecu- 
liar characteristic of objectivity which, as was seen when we 
were extricating and defining the epistemological problem 
(Chap. I. passim), starts the critical philosophy of knowledge 
upon the basis of the full and accurate psychological descrip- 
tion of the nature of knowledge. 

Of all the profitless fallacies of psychology, old or new, 
that is perhaps supreme which explains the act of cognition 

8 



114 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

by explaining away its peculiar matter-of-fact characteris- 
tics. In combating these fallacies at their initial position, 
fortunately or unfortunately nothing can be done which is 
more effective than to insist upon the actual facts of the 
case. These facts are given, in spite of any contradictory 
or disputatious doctrine of so-called psychological science, 
in every plain man's consciousness. "Fortunately or unfor- 
tunately," it has just been said. "Unfortunately" so, if 
those students of psychological science who wish to accept 
the concrete and content-full actuality of mental life must 
be compelled to refute by arguments those who would rule 
out of their account much more than half of this actuality. 
" Fortunately " so because, when the very nature of science 
and of its proofs is understood, it is found that the postu- 
lated objectivity of knowledge lies at the base of all scien- 
tific research and scientific discovery. Indeed, without it, 
the very word " science " has no meaning in such connection. 
There are several current and yet specious ways of speak- 
ing, which may or may not amount to a denial of the real 
objectivity of all cognition. We are often told, for example, 
that knowledge can only be "of phenomena." By this it is 
ordinarily intended to carry some such concealed syllogism 
as the following: Knowledge is merely subjective; its 
object is necessarily no thing but what appears to conscious- 
ness. Its object is subjective, mere appearance to the sub- 
ject. Therefore it is illusory; and cognition must not be 
supposed to afford a correct picture or other mental repre- 
sentation of Reality. All knowledge is only "of phenom- 
ena. " Now some of this and of all similar talk is undoubtedly 
true, is merely correct statement of incontestable psycho- 
logical fact. But most of it is just as undoubtedly false 
from the start, and contradictory of incontestable fact. It 
is true, as has just been admitted, that knowledge is always 
essentially of consciousness, a conscious process; therefore 
subjective. It is also true that the object given to the grasp 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 115 

of consciousness, whenever an act of cognition is completed, 
is my object, is the thing as known to me. It may then — 
borrowing a figure of speech derived from certain acts of 
vision which is helpful, but, like all other figures of speech, 
needs careful interpretation — be called "a phenomenon," 
or appearance to me in my consciousness. But it is the 
very reverse of the truth to say that knowledge is merely 
subjective; for until the stream of consciousness, the state 
or activity of the knowing subject, has become also objec- 
tive, cognition has not taken place. The very problem 
in epistemology, which excites the greatest interest and calls 
out the supreme critical effort, is just this : How shall we 
account for the undoubted and indubitable fact that my 
subjective experience can be objectively determined, can 
become knowledge of an object ? 

"In vain is the snare spread in the sight of any bird." 
And this proverb ought to prove true, no matter how foolish 
the bird or how skilful the fowler. For suppose that one is 
again reminded : " Yes, undoubtedly the phenomenon you 
know appears to you as an object, in the fullest meaning of 
that word, even as a really and entfnz-mentally existent 
Thing; but so it only appears, so you think it to be, and so 
it is as phenomenon merely." The answer of escape is ready 
as soon as the meshes of this net are made visible. It may 
be made in this way: Thus stated, the conclusion totally 
perverts and squarely contradicts the facts of experience. 
For the very nature of every object of my cognition is such 
that, as object, it refuses to be identified with my subjective 
condition; it will not be described as my sensation, or my 
thought, merely; or as mere appearance to me, as only a 
phenomenon. So that the problem remains, deeply and 
inextricably woven into every portion of my most funda- 
mental experience : How shall I account for the undoubted 
fact that when I know, the object of my knowledge is not 
mere phenomenon ? Surely, to tell one that cognition is 



116 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

only of phenomena is to ask one to accept an explanation 
which begins by explaining away the very facts which consti- 
tute the problem. " Nor is it true " — to quote from Stumpf 1 
— " that natural science deals only with phenomena. There 
is not a single natural law which admits of being expressed 
as a law of mere phenomena. " 

Not more happy and profound, though more convincing to 
a large number, is the declaration that man can know only 
his own states of consciousness. Here, too, there is truth of 
fact mixed up with error in fact and falsehood in inference. 
That all knowledge is a state of some one's consciousness, or 
rather, a conscious process belonging to the life-history of 
some mind, is a fact that cannot be doubted. And how 
absurd it is to ask for some other knowledge that takes its 
standpoints outside of or above the laws of human conscious- 
ness, or for a cognition that is other than human cognition, 
has surely been affirmed quite often enough. But to say 
that I can know only "states," and among conceivable 
"states," only such as I am obliged to refer to my Self as 
" my own " states is to contradict twice over the plainest and 
most universal facts of knowledge. Indeed, it would be truer 
to the actual, concrete experience of mankind to remark that 
one can never know any mere "states of consciousness," 
much less one's own states simply. For knowledge is not 
more truly to be described as " of states " than it is to be 
described as " of phenomena. " Properly speaking, such ex- 
treme solipsistic psychology is a meagre and yet false way 
of identifying cognition with self-consciousness. To be con- 
sistent, it must end with the denial of cognition altogether ; 
and it must couch this denial in terms so absurd as really to 
be unstatable. 

It may be granted, as an assumption implied in a construc- 
tive theory of psychology, that having states of consciousness 
does not necessarily imply cognizing them as one's own. In 

1 Psychologie uud Erkeiintnisstheorie, p. 316. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 117 

other words, being conscious and being self-conscious, even 
if a trace of the latter be involved in every known case of 
the former, are not identical processes. But it must be, not 
simply granted as an assumption, but also recognized as a 
fact, that to speak of a knowledge " of states only " is to 
misrepresent all our cognitive experience. That which is 
given to the cognizing subject as its object in every act of 
cognition, is something more than "states," whether of his 
own or of another being. Indeed, the very word, whether used 
as applied to the self or to things as known by the self, is 
a relative term ; and this word no more fitly represents a real 
object of cognition than do phrases such as " pure " substance 
(or substance unqualified) or "pure " quality (qualification, 
that is, which qualifies nothing, and is — so to speak — auf 
der Luft). What is meant by "states," and by all terms 
which can be substituted for this term, is the more or less 
continuous condition of some being, its mode of existence or 
of behavior regarded as filling an interval of time. If, then, 
we mean to limit the cognitive faculty of man by identifying 
the object of cognition with his own states simply, and thus 
to deny its power to apprehend or comprehend real beings as 
in those states, we make the mistake of identifying an ab- 
straction with an actuality. This mistake is the more fatal 
because it happens at the very beginning of an analysis of 
the genuine act of knowledge. Phenomenalism and the ex- 
tremes of individual idealism are forever, professedly, fight- 
ing shy of abstractions. They exhibit an anxiety, usually 
earnest but often excessive, to get at the concrete facts and 
to tell a plain, unvarnished tale about them. Hence the 
customary amount of polemic in the treatises on mental life 
produced by them, and which is directed against hypostasiz- 
ing the results of the thinking faculty. But what, taken at 
its literal worth, is this conclusion which they themselves 
support ? It is an hypostasis of the abstract and purely 
imaginary statical condition of a being, which is made to 



118 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

take the place of the living and acting reality. The ab- 
straction ends in a denial of the possibility of knowledge, 
because the essential and unique characteristic of the act of 
knowledge, as determined by its objectivity, is removed from 
the primary fact of experience. This characteristic assures 
us that the object of cognition never is, and never can be 
defined as "states only;" it ever is, and ever must be, 
"existences in states," — real beings that are suffering or 
acting in certain ways. 

Suppose, however, that the primary psychological datum 
as regards the object of knowledge is somewhat more gener- 
ously treated, while stated in terms of essentially the same 
theory. We are now invited to consider the declaration 
that the only possible object of cognition is the being I call 
myself, as known to myself in its various successive states. 
"I can know only my own states of consciousness" now T be- 
comes equivalent to this : The only way of certified knowing 
is, after all, self -consciousness, and the only kind of imme- 
diate knowledge is the knowledge of the Self — my Self (a 
word which may be identified, according to the psychologist's 
humor toward the prospect of ethical and theological conse- 
quences, either with the so-called " empirical Ego " or with 
a Ding-an-sich Ego which forever calls forth but deludes and 
eludes its own cognitive powers). The false positions and 
mistakes in philosophy which follow upon setting such a 
limitation to the objectivity of knowledge, will continually 
appear more clearly as our epistemological analysis moves 
forward. It is sufficient at present to notice that the con- 
clusion at which this theory of knowledge arrives, and 
usually without any sufficient show of examination or argu- 
ment, is all involved in its starting with a denial of the 
plainest facts of the conscious cognitive process. That pro- 
cess is, in its very essence, as experienced by every man, 
objective with reference to, and with implicates of, a wof-sclf, 
— this, just as certainly and truly as of a self-conscious Self. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 119 

Perception by the senses, when it reaches full-orbed apper- 
ceptive cognition, is just as undoubtedly an act involving the 
reality of its object, as is the clearest, compietest conscious- 
ness of one's own states. What philosophy has to say of the 
more ultimate natures, and of the relations in reality, of these 
two classes of objects, does not concern the present argument. 
Be the outcome of further reflective thinking some form of 
dualism or of monism, of realism or of idealism, the nature 
of the primary act of cognition remains unchanged. And it 
is this from which all epistemological theory takes its point 
of starting. It is this to which it returns for the testing of 
its validity as conformable to the facts of experience. It is 
this to which fidelity must be maintained at any cost to 
the smoothness and consistency of the theory. For if this 
is lost, all is lost. The denial of the full import of the 
primary acts of cognition is the denial of the possibility of 
knowledge of any kind ; it is the abandonment of all attempt 
at a critical epistemology. 

Much more than a numerical half of our earlier cognitions, 
and these the more impressive and important for the safety 
and development of our entire spiritual life, have for their 
objects the states and relations of things. About these 
objects the "plain man's" consciousness affirms, and not 
without a strong show of reason, a more immediate and 
certain knowledge than about its own states. Psychological 
investigation demonstrates, indeed, that the affirmation is 
not altogether well chosen; for no objects can excel, in 
the immediacy of their presentation and the strength of 
accompanying conviction, those that are presented in self- 
consciousness. However, our scientifically assured position 
on this point must not lead us to disparage or overlook the 
character of the testimony which every-day experience gives 
to the immediacy and certainty of the knowledge of things. 
So far as obvious and recognizable independence and per- 
manency of existence are concerned, things appear to have 



120 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

the advantage over Self. It is perhaps only when we intro- 
duce certain ideas of value, and so consider whether the 
Self should desire to be independent and permanent pre- 
cisely in the way in which things are, that the former 
regains its position of superior advantage. On what ground, 
then, does epistemological theory deny the affirmation of 
the universal consciousness that, in a large proportion 
of those cases where the fullest activity of cognitive func- 
tion is employed and the fullest certitude of cognition 
achieved, the object of knowledge is decidedly not my state 
of consciousness, nor any state of any man's conscious- 
ness ? The nature of the primary act of cognition by 
sense-perception refuses to adjust itself to such a denial. 

But at this point, in the effort to escape the full force of 
the testimony derived from every act of cognition to the 
truth that all cognition is objective consciousness, resort 
may be had to a deceptive ambiguity in the meaning of 
the word " object. " Kant's critique of knowledge is full of 
perplexities due to this ambiguity. Because any adequate 
account of the possibility of objective knowledge requires 
that the constitutional forms of the knowing subject should 
be recognized, it does not follow that this recognition fur- 
nishes the entire account of all our objective knowledge. 
For example, I take my stand in receptive or more active 
apperceptive attitude before some natural object. I am 
using my senses to get a knowledge of this bit of mineral I 
have just picked up in the field. Looking, feeling, smell- 
ing, tasting, recalling what I have seen and been told before, 
filling out the picture with imaginings as to how it would 
behave should I subject it to certain physical and chemical 
tests, and reflectively thinking over the whole case, I judge 
it to be " a piece of feldspar. " If the grounds of the final 
judgment, on reviewing them, seem satisfactory, I say: "I 
know it is a piece of feldspar." I have, in arriving at 
knowledge of this sort, reached an elaborate objective con- 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 121 

sciousness of this thing. Now suppose, however, that in 
order to explain such objectivity of consciousness, epistemo- 
logical criticism points out how, in addition to " receptivity 
of sensibility" and "synthesis of imagination," there must 
have been "activity of intellect," functioning according to 
one or more of the constitutional forms of intellectual func- 
tion (the so-called " categories "). This it is, I am now 
informed, in the name of a critique of pure reason, which 
makes the consciousness ohjective ; all external objects are 
made to be, and to be what they are, by the intellect itself. 
In a word, to know things, you must mind them ; or — as is 
so significantly said in popular speech — "put your mind 
into them. " If I follow the path of criticism myself, I may 
be ready to. admit all this as necessary to account for any 
" objective " consciousness whatever. But when I am bidden 
to accept this as the complete and final account of knowl- 
edge, when I am exhorted to believe that this is all I am 
sure of with regard to the existence and nature of the ex- 
ternal object of knowledge, and that this it is which makes 
it an object, set over against the subject, as a non-self over 
against the Self, in the very act of cognition, then I answer, 
" I will not, because I cannot. " Nor did Kant himself con- 
sistently maintain this position; because, in fact, he could 
not. But to prove our statement on this point belongs to 
the criticism of the Kantian Critique rather than to the 
criticism of the faculty of knowledge. 

The characteristic of objectivity, in a meaning more full 
than either of the three foregoing forms of limitation admit, 
must be recognized as belonging to the essential nature of 
all cognition. To deny this characteristic altogether is to 
commit the absurdity of beginning a criticism of knowing 
faculty by overlooking the most essential facts which need 
criticism. It is virtually to assert the theoretical impossi- 
bility of knowledge. To define this objectivity in accordance 
with the phrases, " Knowledge is only of phenomena ; " or, 



122 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

" We can never -know anything but our own states of con- 
sciousness," is to be scarcely less absurd; while we must 
not be deceived into accepting off-hand the sceptical or 
agnostic attitude toward the persuasion that in knowledge 
we somehow come into valid relations with extra-mental 
reality, by an ambiguous use of the words "object" and 
"objective." Further details on this characteristic of cog- 
nition belong, of course, to the main body of epistemology. 

Once more, the psychological nature of cognition is such 
as to involve all the factors and forms of psychic life and of 
psychic activity. If we are to speak of " cognitive faculty " 
— as has already been done repeatedly — then this faculty 
calls forth and summarizes, by absorption into itself, as it 
were, all other faculties. Whichever of the current psycho- 
logical divisions into faculties be adopted, there is no one 
of them whose employment is not, either as actually dis- 
cernible or as theoretically necessary, contained in the full 
account of human cognition. Take away any of these facul- 
ties and knowledge would become either much less than it 
actually is or else actually impossible. But none of them, 
drawn off from and considered apart from the others, is capa- 
ble of achieving an act of cognition. Without content of 
sensation there can be no cognition of external objects. But 
almost equally obvious is the psychological truth that with- 
out this same content, no vital and warm consciousness of 
Self could arise ; certainly, no development of the knowledge 
which comes through self-consciousness is possible with- 
out the delimitation and opposition of Self and Things as 
dependent upon changes in the nature of this sensuous 
content. Without memory, knowledge of the past would 
be a meaningless phrase ; without knowledge of the past, 
through memory, present knowledge both of Things and 
of Self would be impossible ; and growth of knowledge for 
the individual or the race could not take place. But only 
as the form of psychic life called imagination is at work, 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 123 

can there be constructed in consciousness that series of 
mental representations which forms a picture for thought to 
modify, and for faith to attach itself to, as a true picture of 
the transcendent Reality. Even in all our more solid and 
scientific knowledge of natural and physical objects, psycho- 
logical analysis shows the presence of a sort of substitu- 
tionary and analogical activity of phantasy. For all such 
knowledge requires interpretation based upon the sympa- 
thetic projection of the Self into the situation of the other. 
What is called "knowledge of human nature " is confessedly 
dependent upon this sort of faculty. But with the most 
exact of the sciences, with mathematics and mathematical 
physics, the words and symbols employed cannot serve 
either as the vehicles or as the excitants of cognitive pro- 
cesses, unless this activity can be supplied by the cognitive 
subject. " Molecular " and " atomic " motions, " stored " and 
"kinetic" energies, — these and similar terms have no life, 
no warmth, no real meaning for the mind of man, unless 
they are filled with the blood which such an interpretative 
imagination supplies. 1 

Knowledge, however, is not a passive happening, a copying- 
off of reality upon an impressionable psychic substance, 
or a solidarity of ideation-processes empirically produced. 
Neither is it such a merely reproductive activity that the 
subject in which the activity is induced goes through a 
series of processes precisely similar to those gone through 
with by the reality, regarded as stimulating it to the re- 
productive activity. Thinking, as an active rational form 
of functioning, must take in hand the trains of associated 
ideas, in order that genuine cognition may take place. 
Thinking becomes cognition, or rather leads the conscious 
processes up to the completed cognitive act, when judgment 

1 Die Phantctsie ist diejenige Function des DenJcens, die in ihrer Bedeutungjur die 
Wissenschaft, fur die Weltmiffassung und fur die Daseingestaltung am meisten ver- 
kannt wird. — Duehring, Cursus der Philosophie, p. 44. 



124 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

on recognized grounds is consciously made. All the more 
purely intellectual "momenta" become fused in that total 
attitude of mind toward objective reality, which is most 
properly called knowledge, only when such judgment is 
attained. 

But how necessary to every act of cognition are other than 
the strictly intellectual "momenta," how truly knowledge 
is an affair of feeling and will and involves all the affective 
and voluntary mind, must be made clear with some detail, 
unless our epistemology is willing quite to mistake the 
nature of knowledge. The feeling aspects of our psychic 
life are in themselves just as really varied and variously 
colored, just as constantly present, as are the intellectual 
momenta. Were it not for this ever present and vital 
experience of feeling, our sensations, ideas, and thoughts 
would all be thinner and paler than the trooping shadows of 
the vaguest dream, — without interest, without value, with- 
out reality of any kind. Nor would our trains of ideas 
result in judgments apprehending and comprehending the 
changing qualifications and relations of the really existent; 
truth would not be seized upon and appropriated with warm 
conviction as to its certitude and its worth. 

Peculiar forms of conscious experience there are which 
we seem compelled to recognize as the feelings belonging 
uniquely to cognition. Reference has repeatedly been made 
to the perfectly invincible conviction that in knowledge we, 
the subjective, come into some sort of relations with an 
object that is not-us, that is trans-subjective. Experience 
by way of cognition implicates the transcendent, — of this, at 
least a naive and vague confidence seems to be an essential 
part of every completed cognitive process. But what shall 
be said of this conviction ? The completer answer to this 
inquiry takes us well into the heart of the epistemological 
problem. It is, indeed, upon this feeling of conviction that 
in the last analysis our doctrine of knowledge has largely to 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 125 

rely for the defence of its theoretical conclusion : the facts 
of consciousness are not themselves intelligible without the 
assumption of an extra-mental Reality on which conscious- 
ness is dependent. 

That the will of the knower is ever present and taking a 
part, so to speak, in every act of knowledge, is a psycho- 
logical truism ; it follows from the very conception of knowl- 
edge itself as a complex form of mental activity. The 
psychological doctrine of the influence of attention upon 
perception, upon self-consciousness, and upon all the grow- 
ing body of knowledge in which science consists, is an 
expression of this truth. But below this familiar line of 
thinking reposes the psycho-physical structure of facts which 
shows us that cognition itself is never a purely sensory, 
but always also a sensory-motor affair. In that living 
commerce with things which requires action, and which 
consists in doing something to them, with a will and a 
purpose in it, and in letting them do something to us which 
restricts or thwarts, or executes our will and purpose, 
does all human knowledge of things grow. This truth also 
demands further interpretation. 

In this connection the practical value of a comprehensive 
view has a bearing upon theoretical truth. There are real 
dangers to the life of conduct and of religion which come 
from saying: "Intellect is all;" or "Feeling is all;" or 
"Will is all." The theoretical truth on which the practical 
rests is this: Knowledge is of neither one alone; knowledge 
is of intellect, feeling, and will. The final witness, to 
which we are forced to make appeal for the attainment of 
truth, and for escape from error, is a sort of complex mental 
attitude. This attitude involves feeling and will as well as 
intellect. Emphasizing the aspect of feeling, we may call it 
a kind of conviction of the truth of the cognitive judgment ; 
in matters of contested evidence, or of practical importance, 
or of grave intellectual interest, the conviction may become 



126 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

of a highly emotional character. Emphasizing the aspect 
of will, we may refer to it as a mental positing of the 
reality of the object, which may become a seizure of, and a 
holding on to, this object in the presence of sceptical temp- 
tations ; and which may then appear as a quasi-ethical activ- 
ity. It is just these emotional and voluntary aspects of the 
total cognitive process that have led men in all ages to 
regard their cognitions as answers to voices which called to 
them from out of the depths of Reality, or as intuitions 
and insights which brought them into the most interior 
construction and processes of Reality (Eirileuchtungen and 
Anschauungen as well as Vorstellungen and Begriffe). Rec- 
ognizing and submitting one's judgment to the voice, to the 
light, thus gives a moral significance to scientific and philo- 
sophical investigation in general. Hence the picture drawn 
by Augustine of God originally speaking with men as with 
angels (ipsa ineommutabili veritate, illustrans mentes eormn). 
As said Bonaventura, "Thou hast per se the capacity to 
behold truth, if concupiscences and phantasms do not hinder 
thee, and like clouds interpose between thee and truth's 
ray. " 

A psychological view of the Development of Knowledge 
reveals still more clearly the nature of the problem which 
epistemological philosophy has to examine. In the indi- 
vidual and in the race the growth of cognition does not, 
indeed, result from the introduction of new powers, or from 
the sudden appearance of distinctly different faculties, in an 
epoch-making way. The kingdom of knowledge, like the 
kingdom of heaven, grows as does a grain of mustard seed. 
Indeed, if we could only use the word comprehensively 
enough we might be tempted to declare that it resembles a 
"biological" development. It is not given to the observer, 
by a microscopic examination of the mustard seed, to predict 
the character of the developed plant. Nor can one say that 
all of the latter is given potentially, or even that its con- 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 127 

ditions are present, in the seed. Neither, again, can one 
discern the separate functional growths, and the correlation 
of the organic processes, in the very earliest growth. Yet 
the forces and principles at work, and with which the inves- 
tigator must reckon, are the same throughout. In no other 
realm of inquiry is the principle of continuity more strictly 
applicable, more obviously potent, than in the growth of 
human knowledge. The detailed descriptive history of this 
growth it belongs to psychology to give. The interpretation 
of some of the more important aspects and portions of this 
history is, indeed, of supreme interest to epistemology ; it 
will constantly excite our effort in the subsequent chapters 
of this book. At present a few words in addition to what 
has already been brought to notice will suffice. 

Psychology can describe many of the conditions under 
which that great "diremptive process" takes place, whose 
accomplishment is crowned by knowledge as a consciousness 
of relation between subject and object, and as an objective 
consciousness of both subject and object existing in this 
relation. It can show how, as the entire sensory-motor 
mechanism runs more smoothly in the channels which have 
become marked out, certain groups of resulting experiences 
form themselves into a Self, envisaged or conceived of, and 
certain others into Things, either immediately known or 
only inferred. And now the 'whole world of experienced 
objects has organized itself into two great classes of cognized 
and cognizable realities ; but this world of opposed and yet 
intercommunicating entities had its growth, psychologically, 
from a common root! Now, too, the world of science begins 
to reveal itself as under tuition purchased at the expense of 
the persistent and rationally ordered experience of the race. 
A strange world this, of which we are told in terms of 
highly preferred knowledge ! Yet this knowledge claims to 
be based upon observation by the senses, — of somewhat 
more than ordinary pretensions to accuracy and painstaking 



128 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 

care. It results from much looking, hearing, feeling, smell- 
ing, tasting, and especially from much muscular intercourse 
with things; and it is called the "world of sense," in which 
every sensible man implicitly believes, and to doubt which 
is to discredit " common-sense " and science alike. 

But further acquaintance with this body of knowledge, so 
precious in the eyes of those who cultivate it, and in the 
sight of us all, reveals its true character in a different way. 
It is rather a world of ideas and of thoughts. It makes the 
most enormous demands upon thinking faculty to carry the 
mind through tortuous and complicated processes of ratioci- 
nation, where symbols and words that surely have no real 
correlates are the necessary scaffolding for every step. It 
challenges phantasy far more severely and peremptorily than 
any poet or artist has ever done. Without doubt, imagina- 
tion breaks quite down in its effort to conceive of forces that 
are stored and do not act (or energies of position), of atoms 
that have no color or shape, of ether that is limitless in 
tenacity and infinitely tenuous and without weight, etc. 
The whole structure of this world is underlain and inter- 
penetrated with hypothetical entities, causes, transactions, 
etc., which are introduced in the interest of observed facts, 
but which can never themselves become actual objects of 
observation. Yet if we reject it as merely hypothetical and 
imaginary, or as the product of purely abstract thinking — a 
system of mental images and conceptions of most extraordi- 
nary and non-sensible kind — we confine human knowledge 
within undesirably narrow limitations. And, indeed, these 
activities of imagination and thought, with their underlying 
postulates, and their inciting and supporting play of the 
feeling that it is so, and of the will to have it so, are essen- 
tially the same as those employed in all the knowledge of 
our daily life. If science cannot correct common-sense by 
denying to it the exercise of all its dearest and most impor- 
tant rights, common-sense cannot distrust science without 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW 129 

surrendering the rationality of all that is of practical inter- 
est to itself. For cognition, by the very principles of its 
growth, tends more and more to the solidarity and yet per- 
petual flux of a system of living organisms. Nor can science 
and common -sense safely or correctly draw the line that 
shall shut philosophy out of this growing body of human 
knowledge. 



CHAPTER V 

THINKING AND KNOWING 

THAT knowledge cannot be gained without more or less of 
correct and prolonged thinking is a practical maxim 
which no one would be found to dispute. But that there is 
much knowledge which does not come by mere thinking is a 
maxim scarcely more to be held in doubt. Thinking is, 
then, universally recognized as an important and even neces- 
sary part of knowing; but it is not the whole of knowing. 
Or, in other words, one must make use of one's faculties of 
thought as an indispensable means to cognition; but there 
are other means which must also be employed, since it is 
not by thought alone that the human mind attains cognition. 
This manner of speech is indicative of that trustworthy 
psychological instinct and its resulting body of opinion 
which characterizes human nature. And thus, in the elabo- 
ration of a philosophical theory of knowledge which shall be 
true to the facts of life, it is matter of the first importance 
to compare thought and cognition, and to recognize both 
their points of resemblance and their points of difference. 
A sound epistemological doctrine must make clear how 
much and what of the cognitive process consists in that 
movement of the intellect which we call thinking ; and how 
it is that truth, with its assured grasp upon the existence 
and relations of the real — the trans-subjective — world, is 
thus made the possession of the subject, in the form of states 
of his own consciousness. 

If now the popular opinion, as well as that of the majority 
of writers on logic, be taken in answer to the question, 



THINKING AND KNOWING 131 

What besides clear, patient, and correct thinking is neces- 
sary to a knowledge of truth ? there is discoverable an almost 
complete agreement. It is observation — patient, exact, and 
intelligent — that lays the basis, so to speak, for the struc- 
ture of truth which thinking rears. And, moreover, since 
every thinker is liable to have his thoughts wander, or 
become too much mixed up with imaginings, and since 
there is danger from too " pure " or " abstract " thoughts, the 
results of thinking must be constantly compared with renewed 
and improved observations of fact. It is thus by using 
observation to start the trains of thinking, which now — once 
started — carry us into a wider and more airy domain, where, 
however, our conceptions of things must be tested with ever 
open eyes and freshened memories of our actual visions, that 
we gain more and more of assured knowledge. Indeed, 
under the influence of a natural reaction against former 
magnificent attempts to handle the truths of the real world 
as problems for thought only, modern science has often no 
little contempt to throw upon " abstractions " as compared 
with that cognition of facts which is gained by observation. 
Some of its devotees are even tempted to forget that mere 
observation, if such a thing indeed were possible, would no 
more create science than mere thinking. 

The more carefully analytic studies of modern psychology 
prove that, in fact, thinking and cognition are, so to speak, 
per se inseparable. They show that without thinking no 
cognition whatever is possible. This is a truth of which no 
one has ever been more firmly persuaded than was Kant; 
and it is to be hoped that no one will ever attempt to elabo- 
rate it more fully than he did. But what is chiefly needed 
at the present time is to learn from modern psychology, and 
to expand and teach in an improved epistemology, the fuller 
doctrine of the relations between the two. In previous works 
on logic, and even in not a few of the most important philo- 
sophical treatises, the distinction between knowledge by ob- 



132 THINKING AND KNOWING 

servation and knowledge by thinking has been defectively 
made or grossly exaggerated. Not infrequently, the former 
is called "intuitive" or "immediate" knowledge, and the 
latter "rational" or "mediate" or "abstract" knowledge. 
And now the logician thinks it right to hold that when he 
has given an account of the forms which characterize the 
mental life of thought, he has discharged his entire duty as 
a student of mental life. For is not logic & formal affair, 

— a presentation (usually most dry and lifeless), with dread- 
ful array of strange symbols, of the mere forms of thinking 
faculty as it conceives, judges, and reasons from grounds to 
consequences ? To the psychologist belongs, in sooth ! the 
explication and the vindication of so-called intuitive or 
immediate knowledge. How, and on what terms of self- 
conscious estimate of my own cognitive faculty, and in 
the exercise of what dark and mysterious rights, do I stand 
before any natural object — a tree, a stone, a human face — 
and affirm : " I know you, for sure ; that you are, that you 
really are ; and what you are in your actual structure and 
modes of behavior " ? This is a complex and most vexing 
question which logic is glad enough to turn over to psy- 
chology. And yet, it is not a question which can be 
answered, or even have its import faithfully recognized, 
without taking into account the application of the laws of 
thought in all so-called immediate cognition of reality. 

There is little reason for wonder, then, when psychology 

— especially of that "new" type which is prone to abjure 
metaphysics and epistemology as unworthy members of its 
own family, and to consort rather with biology and physi- 
ology as with persons of its nearer kinship — refuses to take 
this question off the hands of its ancient partner in intel- 
lectual concerns, the stately "scientist" (of the high-and- 
dry a priori order) called logic. For does not psychology 
aim to become the exact science of mental phenomena, of 
" states of consciousness, as such " ? But at this point other 



THINKING AND KNOWING 133 

questions arise. Is not my cognition of that thing over 
there — that tree, or stone, or human face — a mental phe- 
nomenon, a state of my consciousness ? And if it is to be 
described and explained at all by any form of human 
science, does not the duty of description and explanation 
fall upon that science which defines itself as having a right 
to the sphere of mental phenomena in general, of all con- 
scious states ? If, further, cognition is to be described and 
explained by psychology at all, should it not be scientifically 
handled in its entirety, without mutilation or suppression of 
anything which rightly belongs to its mental constitution ? 
Further, is it not clear that objective reference, warmed with 
the unchanging conviction of the trans-subjective and the 
extra-mental, is something inseparable from the very psychic 
being of cognition ? How, then, can psychology shirk the 
task of an analytic that goes to the very core of cognitive 
consciousness ? But in vain is a piteous pleading for response 
to these questions set up before the bar of the current scien- 
tific psycholog} 7 . Such questions are by her chief doctors of 
laws nowadays handed over to epistemology. Meantime 
they are themselves spending their "labor for that which 
satisfieth not." 

At this point, then, we are again thrown back upon Kant 
and upon his followers in the same line of critical inquiry. 
We find this master of analytic constantly insisting upon the 
truth that knowledge is impossible without thought; mere 
sensation-content, held up in consciousness as a picture by 
constructive imagination, does not as yet amount to knowl- 
edge. For if " thoughts without contents are empty, intui- 
tions without concepts are blind." Bat Kant, in the 
working out of his theory of the relations between " empty 
thoughts" and "blind intuitions," often so sets intuitions 
and thoughts in contrast as to seem to make them functions 
and products of diverse powers of the soul. And — a much 
more serious deficiency which finally becomes a source of 



134 THINKING AND KNOWING 

disastrous error — he devotes his theory of knowledge wholly 
to its a priori, formal side. Such a restriction of our 
critique might, indeed, be allowed in the interests of nar- 
rowing the problem, which is, as Kant attempts to isolate 
and discuss it, sufficiently comprehensive and profound. 
But the analysis of form, while it may for a time seem to 
expose and to account for the peculiar nature of thought, 
does not for one single moment even seem to do the same 
thing for cognition. For when, in the evolution of mental 
life, we come to knowledge, it is the origin, nature, and 
validating of the matter-of-fact content which interests and 
concerns us most. How does sensibility originally come to 
be impressed at all ? and how does it come to be impressed 
as it actually is impressed, beyond the ability of phantasy 
and will and thought wholly to control the impression ? 
Whence comes, and what is the value of, that belief in an 
envisaged reality which is essential to the very existence 
of every act of intuitive knowledge ? In answer to these 
and other similar inquiries, Kant can only repeat his doc- 
trine of the a priori forms of the two distinct kinds of 
cognition, — intuitions and concepts ; except as he every- 
where, at times, by sundry hints and nods and dumb but 
meaningful gesticulations, indicates the presence in the dark 
background of a mysterious X, a Ding-an-sich indeed. 

The creation of a fixed gulf between kinds of knowledge, 
and the relegation, for its sources and its validity, of one 
kind to an unanalyzable mystery, and of the other to a 
system of merely formal rules, with the accompanying sepa- 
ration of the faculties involved in all cognitive activity, and 
a total disregard of the necessary implicates of every cogni- 
tion, have been the irpoyrov i/reOSo? and the chief mischief- 
maker in epistemological theories since Kant. Fichte's 
science of knowledge aimed to attain a systematic cognition 
of the really existent by a series of states of self -envisage - 
mcnt. The processes of self-consciousness were here thought 



THINKING AXD KXOWIXG 135 

out into the form of a system of concepts, and then identified 
off-hand with the sum-total of Reality. With Schelling 
" the true direction " of cognition is not a movement along 
the line of self-consciousness alone. "We can go." says 
he, "from nature to ourselves, or from ourselves to nature, 
but the true direction for him to whom knowledge is of 
more account than all else, is that which nature herself 
adopts. " 1 Moving in this direction he would give to the 
place which thought reaches the characteristics of a stand- 
point for intuition. "For there dwells in us all a secret, 
wonderful faculty, by virtue of which we can withdraw from 
the mutations of time into our innermost disrobed selves, 
and there behold the eternal under the form of immutability ; 
such vision is our innermost and peculiar experience, on 
which alone depends all that we know and believe of a 
supra-sensible world." Thus from Schelling's faculty of 
"intellectual intuition" are both intuition and thought 
really dropped out; and with them the subject and the 
object vanish together from the field of the really existent 
as necessary "moments" in the operation of cognitive 
faculty. Knowledge is once more explained by being 
destroyed. 

Hegel showed a saner mind in his appreciation of the 
relations between thinking and knowing, and between know- 
ing and being. His philosophy has been called "a critical 
transformation and development of Schelling's System of 
Identity." His aim, as defined by himself, was (1) "to ele- 
vate consciousness to the standpoint of absolute knowledge;" 
and (2) "to develop systematically the entire contents of 
this knowledge by the dialectical method." In accomplish- 
ing this aim, an overestimate is placed upon the syste- 
matic arrangement of the mere forms of thinking; absolute 
knowledge becomes so elevated above the standpoint of the 

1 From the close of an article by Schelling himself in the first volume of the 
" Zeitschrift fur speculative Physik." 



136 THINKING AND KNOWING 

ordinary consciousness that it cannot be attained or even 
descried by those who maintain this standpoint; and the 
critical examination of the import and value of the funda- 
mental assumption, that the forms of thought are the forms 
of reality, is stopped short almost before it is fairly begun. 
Hence, in part, it is that men devoted to the enlargement of 
the field of knowledge as covered by the concrete sciences of 
nature have, often in extreme ignorance of his real position, 
treated Hegel so contemptuously. Nor is it very strange 
that such investigators feel more sympathy with the position 
of the most contemptuous of Hegel's critics in the common 
field of philosophy, — namely, Schopenhauer. "Perception," 
says the latter, " is not only the source of all knowledge, but 
is itself knowledge /car e^oxqv, is the only unconditionally 
true, genuine knowledge worthy of the name. For it alone 
imparts insight properly so-called, it alone is actually assimi- 
lated by man, passes into his nature, and can with fall 
reason be called his; while the conceptions merely cling to 
him." They "thus afford the real content of all our thought, 
and whenever they are wanting we have not had conceptions 
bat mere words in our heads." Thought, consisting in com- 
paring conceptions, gives us no really new knowledge. "On 
the other hand, to perceive, to allow the things themselves 
to speak to us, to apprehend new relations of them, and then 
to take up and deposit all this in conceptions, in order to 
possess it with certainty, — that gives new knowledge. " 

To all such one-sided views of the nature of knowledge, its 
growth, and the way, through it, that we come at reality, so 
to speak, it is the completer understanding of the primary 
facts of knowledge, especially as they evince the similarities 
and differences between thinking and knowing, which affords 
the only satisfactory critical standpoint. Cognition is one 
living process throughout; and valuable as a distinction of 
its stages and kinds and points of departure may be, there 
is one essential body of characteristics to be recognized as 



THINKING AND KNOWING 137 

everywhere present. Intuitive knowledge does not come at 
first, or grow, without thinking; nor is thinking that is 
not in some sort intuitive, if such a thing were at all pos- 
sible, the avenue to more of mediate and indirect knowledge. 
The first act of cognition achieved by the infant mind is a 
triumph of thinking faculty. The last and highest achieve- 
ment of knowledge gained by the highly trained and richly 
stored reflective mind is also a feeling-full and voluntary 
envisagement of reality. Cognition purified of thought is 
deprived of a factor essential to cognition. Pure thinking 
is never so abstracted from successive steps of intuitive 
commerce with the real as to be purely thinking; and if it 
could be thus abstracted, it could not become the beginning, 
the means, or the end of a cognitive process. The very 
prevalence, however, of this principle of continuity, as 
applied to all the growth of knowledge in and through 
thought, makes it the more necessary that we should under- 
stand the resemblances and the differences of these two atti- 
tudes of Mind toward Reality. 

Let us, then, compare that mental movement or form of 
psychic life which is called "thought" with our previous 
description of the nature and growth of knowledge. What 
is it to think ? To answer with Mr. Spencer and others as 
though thinking were mere generalizing under the principle 
of comparison is to fail of fully describing what men ordi- 
narily experience when they think, and think concretely, 
and to some definite purpose. With us all, when we make 
earnest with our thoughts, the stream of consciousness 
becomes an active conscious relating of otherwise separate 
items of cognition. It is subjective and conscious, a pro- 
cess ; but a process in consciousness which is better described 
as distinctively not a passive suffering of something, but a 
doing of something with our own ideas. Thinking is will- 
ing; jedes DenJcen ein Wollen, as Wundt admirably says. 1 

1 System der Philosophie, p. 42. 



138 THINKING AND KNOWING 

Thought is experienced as a transaction produced by ourselves. 
So that, although it is not to be described as willing per se, 
and can neither be always identified with the higher forms 
of self-conscious choice nor — which is yet more certain — 
usually relegated to the lower forms of so-called unimotived 
volition, it appears as a quasi-voluntary response to a 
demand. Often one's thinking is a highly developed and 
singularly pronounced and self-conscious form of willing. 
When I am thinking, — always about this or that, — and in 
proportion as I am not dreaming or letting my ideas run 
away with me, I am " making up my mind. " i, the mind, 
am making up myself, — although in accordance, as further 
investigation shows me, with internal necessities called 
"laws of the mind," and more obviously in attempted 
accordance with the actual relations and forms of the 
behavior of things. Thus men tell each other what J think, 
about this or that; and they ask each other: "What do you 
think ? " — you, as a self-active, self-directing subject of the 
conscious process called your thoughts. 

Yet again, all cognition, which comes by thinking, 
involves some seeking, striving after, actual pursuing of the 
truth ; and this necessarily implies willing as a " moment " 
in the thinking process. No man is likely to know the truth 
who does not will to know it, who actively restrains, or pas- 
sively refrains himself from willing. As we think, we pur- 
pose to apprehend and comprehend, to seize hold of and 
grasp around the object about which we are thinking. And 
although, of course, language here is pregnant with figures 
of speech, there are few matters of common experience 
where figures of speech are more pregnant with truth than 
are those here employed. 

Thinking, too, is a more complex form of psychic move- 
ment or activity than is mental representation, — meaning by 
the latter the merely passive flow of unchecked and relatively 
purposeless trains of associated ideas. It is upon the basis 



THINKING AND KNOWING 139 

of this lower form of mental representation that thinking, 
properly so-called, reposes. In saying this, we are probably 
separating in thought what never occurs wholly separate in 
the actual life of the mind. In few, indeed, of one's states 
of reverie and of fancy-play, even in dreams, does one seem 
to one's self wholly to refrain from taking any part in the 
character and succession of the ideas which appear in con- 
sciousness. Rarely is the Ego a mere passive spectator of 
the drama enacted by the faculty of ideation. Even when 
the ideas get away from me, as it were, and disport them- 
selves as becomes the ideas of an animal or of a madman, I 
am still right there, ready to prompt or to repress them, and 
not wholly theirs instead of their being at least partly 
mine. Thus, too, in accordance with the active character- 
istic of all thinking do we distinguish it as a more complex 
process than mere association of ideas, — endowed, as it 
were, with a higher style of mentality. Ideation appears 
as a process given to consciousness ; thinking is more fully 
self-conscious and self -induced, selective and preferential. 
From this point of view it has even been argued 2 that only 
free wills can truly t7iink, not to say think truly. For the 
thinking subject must have the power to grasp and hold the 
thought-element (the " moment " which may be used to enter 
into the judgment) against the destructive influence of the 
flux of images mechanically determined ; must choose a com- 
panion for comparison or contrast with it, and so judge what 
is true in reality as distinguished from what is passively 
determined in the mental train. 

In connection with such experiences as illustrate the dis- 
tinctions already made, we become aware of the peculiar 
strain and tone of attention which accompanies the thinking 
process. When one is not thinking somewhat intently, or 
not definitively and determinately thinking at all, one is 

1 Compare Kaulich, " Ueber die Moglichkeit, das Ziel, und die Grenzen des 
Wissens," pp. 29 f. 



140 THINKING AND KNOWING 

like a spectator of a light drama, or it may be of a comedy. 
One attends with interest, indeed, but with the interest 
rather of those who will have others do the work or conduct 
the play, while they amuse themselves by looking on. But 
let any of the actors (the ideas) challenge and secure another 
kind of interest; and then the whole strain and tone of 
attention changes, as one begins to think more reflectively 
and to conclude about what is going on. For thinking is 
somewhat of business, is no mere play, for the mind; and 
business demands attention, directed to the accomplishment 
of a clearly conceived end. Hence the teleology of thinking 
as it enters into the final purposes of cognition, and brings 
the man of thought and the man of action into the unity of 
one life. With this change in the character of the attention, 
demanded and given, there goes a change in the feelings, 
both such as have reference to self and such as have refer- 
ence to things. For the total affective accompaniment of 
thinking as a necessary process to the completed act of cog- 
nition is of a peculiar, complex kind. I am more self- 
conscious in thinking, more keenly alive and sensitive to 
every subjective change as a possible clue to the knowledge 
I seek, or as a possible temptation or solicitation into some 
path of error. I care more about myself when I, as subject, 
make me, as object, the terminal of my train of thought. 
But if I, as subject, make some thing or relation between 
things, the object of my thinking, the same characteristic 
wakefulness and feeling-full attention belongs to the conscious 
processes evoked. 

Let all this be considered, as illustrated in men's daily 
experiences, — remembering that the thinking of which we 
are discoursing is not that pale and ghostly process of linking 
together so-called concepts by highly abstract symbols which 
is scholastically held to represent the formal laws of thought. 
The rather must the philosophical theory of knowledge 
primarily deal with the blood-red and sinewy thought of the 



THINKING AND KNOWING 141 

street, the mart, the ordinary waking life of the multitude 
of men. Actual thinking, as distinguished from the linking 
of symbols and concepts together in books on logic, seldom 
for a moment relaxes its firm clutch upon reality, and its 
invincible conviction that the self-conscious thinker is 
adjusting his own mental attitudes, with a prompt sequence 
in adjustment of the appropriate actions, to the real proper- 
ties and actual relations of selves and of things. But this 
is the kind of thinking that enters into every primary act of 
knowledge, of every cognition which, for certitude and so- 
called immediacy or " intuitive " characteristics, belongs to 
the first rank. 

The most special characterization of thinking as a factor 
of all cognition is reached, however, only when it is affirmed 
that all thinking is relating activity. From one standpoint, 
from which it is always proper to regard consciousness, 
thought is a recognition of relations determined by the 
action of objects as they appear to the thinking mind. This 
is the so-called common-sense, realistic way of stating the 
facts. What is the metaphysical truth in such expressions ? 
It is a fact of experience which may not be questioned, that 
one " feels at liberty " to imagine various sorts of relations, 
between things and their qualities, between things and 
minds, and between things and things, as one wills and 
without regard to the actuality of these relations. But if 
one intends to think, — meaning by this something more 
than mere play of imagination, — one is under compulsion 
to follow, either in actual observation or in intent, the 
courses marked out by reality. In recognition of this pas- 
sive and objectively determined aspect of the relating func- 
tion in thought, the pious enthusiast may exclaim: "I think 
thy thoughts after Thee, God ! " when he has adjusted his 
own mental representations to the relations of the external 
world. So also the " scientist " holds himself obligated to 
think natural objects as they actually are related to each 



142 THINKING AND KNOWING 

other in Nature herself. And the plain man considers his 
fellow to have lost the most trustworthy possession of his 
common-sense, if he habitually mistakes imagination for 
thought as to the qualities and the transactions of things. 
But the other and opposite point of view must not be lost 
out of sight. For if to think is active consciousness, and 
its peculiar characteristic is a sort of "getting-at " relations, 
then it is right to declare that thinking is relating activity. 
And, indeed, this goes to the very heart of the question. 
We cannot, indeed, accept the often repeated dictum of Lotze 
— " To be is to be related " — as a satisfactory metaphysical 
principle. But that no thing is known, or can be known, as 
out of relation, or without being in relation, is an un- 
doubted epistemological fact. For the declaration that "to 
know is to relate " is a valid, if only a partial, description 
of knowledge. But that activity of the mind which per- 
forms the act of relating is precisely what is meant by 
thinking, in respect of its most fundamental and universal 
characteristic. 

The details implied in affirming that all thinking is relat- 
ing activity, must be referred back to descriptive psychology 
to tell. From it we learn that relating is not merely com- 
parison, not merely assimilation, or differentiation. It 
serves our purpose — which, it must not be forgotten, is to 
show how thinking enters into all cognition without being 
the whole of any complete cognitive act — simply to notice 
that thinking, as relating activity or the conscious and pur- 
poseful bringing of our ideas into relations which are 
believed to be conformable to the actual relations of the 
extra-mentally existent world, culminates in judgment. 
Thinking involves discrimination; indeed, the primary 
phase of the so-called faculty of thought may best be spoken 
of as "discriminating consciousness." 1 So, too, in its 
higher forms of manifestation thinking is analyzing activity; 

1 See Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, chap. xiv. 



THINKING AND KNOWING 143 

and without such analyzing activity, true judgment (at least, 
in the form in which judgment enters into a finished act of 
apperceptive consciousness) cannot be formed. For every 
true judgment implies a consciously recognized duality — 
albeit as existent, combined in the unity of the judgment 
itself. But it is judgment as synthetic, essentially so, in 
which all thinking processes culminate, and which becomes 
an essential factor in every primary act of cognition. 

Only, then, as we understand the actual, concrete judgments 
of men, what they consciously are and what they signify, 
can we understand the relations of thinking and knowing ; 
and thus, so far forth, frame a theory of knowledge consistent 
with the facts of experience. Now the actual concrete act of 
judging is. itself a process in consciousness. Strictly speak- 
ing, it is not so much a mental seizure and permanent hold- 
ing of some island in the flowing stream of conscious life as 
it is a determinate direction in the flow of the stream itself. 
"When, therefore, judgment is spoken of as a " synthesis," it is 
well not to be deceived by the figure of speech. In no judg- 
ment, not even in affirming the simplest identity of a mathe- 
matical or logical sort (X= Y; or, All A is B), does the 
mind stand still while it places the ideas, one upon top of 
the other, or contemplates them lying side by side. In affirm- 
ing X= X, I distinguish the X which is in the place of the 
subject from the X which is in the place of the predicate ; 
and, then, I posit a certain relation by mentally constituting 
a synthesis of the two. This I must do, if I recognize the 
relation existing between the terms of the judgment; that 
is, if I make a true judgment as the terminal, so to speak, 
of an act of real cognition. But here two things of common 
experience must be borne in mind. I may have some sort of 
a mental presentment of terms which might possibly be formed 
into a judgment, or even of these terms as somehow set 
objectively in the relations appropriate to a possible judg- 
ment, without either actually recognizing them as terms of 



144 THINKING AND KNOWING 

a judgment or synthesizing them as an actual judgment of 
my own. I may see X=X, and make use of this percept as 
a kind of momentary stepping-stone in an argument, with- 
out judging X really to be = X. It is not in mathematics 
alone that men conduct complicated trains of ideation, with 
more or less control by active thinking, and yet only occa- 
sionally perform the mental act of judgment, in the more 
proper meaning of that term. Moreover, in considering the 
relation of thinking to knowing, it is always essential to 
inquire carefully what it is that is really judged. Is it that 
X is equal to X; or only that i" am proceeding along the 
right path toward the solution of my problem ? The life of 
our daily activities is full of problems for consciousness to 
solve ; but more and more does the practical solution of many of 
these problems take place as the result of past acquirements 
and growths of cognition, with relatively little actual judg- 
ment exercised at the precise moment of such solution. Yet 
all this psychic life is illuminated by spots of mental awaken- 
ing to the higher and more complicated activities of a self- 
conscious and apperceptive sort ; and then we find ourselves 
really judging. Such genuine judgment is always itself a 
movement of consciousness toward an end which is a men- 
tal synthesis of distinguishably separate terms. 

But, second, after saying thus much we must not be con- 
sidered as advocates of that atomistic view of psychologists 
who find insoluble puzzles where none exist, and who even 
go to the length of declaring impossible what is plain matter- 
of-fact in every man's daily experience. It is not a fair 
representation of consciousness, or even an adequate sug- 
gestion for an outline picture of it, to compare its successive 
states to a line in which the single sensations, or ideas, are 
points. The so-called " stream of consciousness " may, not 
inaptly, be compared to a river that at times widens and at 
other times greatly narrows its bed ; perhaps it sometimes 
also disappears underground, only to reappear on the other 



THINKING AND KNOWING 145 

side of some considerable extent of the territory measured 
by objective time. But its unity is never, at any instant, 
comparable to that of a point ; nor is the succession of its 
states in the one life like the succession of points, or small 
portions, of a physical line. The fact simply is that, in 
judging, we are in a kind of conscious active process which 
terminates in the positing of a unifying relation between two 
consciously separable terms. 

There is something very significant in the temporal char- 
acteristics of judgment as an inseparable factor of cognition ; 
and this is the slowing-up — almost amounting to a pause 
— in the time-rate of consciousness, when the business of 
judging takes place. Nor is this characteristic a mere effect 
in the imagination of the subject. Psycho-physics shows 
beyond all contradiction, what every unsophisticated observer 
of men knew beforehand, that it takes time to judge. Un- 
judged impressions flit rapidly, or troop in confused swarms 
before the mind. " There they go," — we are accustomed 
to say ; as though they were not of our mind and we could 
not, therefore, detain them. But we " come to " judgment 
more slowly ; we bring the sensations and ideas to some 
common point of view, and we take a little time to pronounce 
a synthesis between them. All this is, in some sort, capable 
of measurement and of expression in so many one-thousandths 
of a second. How many more <x you will need to judge than 
merely to be the more passive recipient of impressions, can 
be told you in any psychological laboratory. More than 
this ; we are actually aware of taking a bit of a pause, of 
insisting on a suspension of judgment, although it seems 
already to have formed itself, that we may make sure of 
correct judgment. This time it is our resolve : we will not 
press the key until we have actually judged that the removal 
of the screen showed us red instead of green ; we will not 
guess, or jump at the conclusion, but will judge accurately 
the real state of the case. It is just this judging activity 

10 



146 THINKING AND KNOWING 

which is the essential thinking part of the cognitive process ; 
the completion of the judgment marks the gaining of knowl- 
edge as a fact in consciousness. Note how characteristic and 
peculiar is the feeling of relief and of satisfaction — the 
pleased release from tension and the joy of recognition, 
as the judgment is formed ! " I have judged correctly " (ac- 
cording to fact), and " I know" are two different expressions 
for one and the same attitude of mind. 

In the larger doctrine of judgment, as a psychical affair, 
the truth is illustrated on a larger scale. The man of de- 
liberate judgment is, other things being equal, the man whose 
cognitions are sure, because reposing on grounds consciously 
recognized and estimated. And this is as true of those 
judgments which enter into so-called immediate cognitions 
as of those which constitute a body of scientific truth. 
Knowledge is horn of thinking which has arrived at the paus- 
ing place of a judgment, — a finished product of synthetic 
activity. In saying this, however, we must not neglect the 
value of " insight," or underestimate the part which the 
quick seizure, the divination under divine guidance, of the 
truth has to play in the winning and the increasing of knowl- 
edge. For cognition comes through Kennen as well as through 
Wissen ; indeed, no hard and fixed line can be drawn between 
the two. The poet, the artist, the inventor, on the one hand, 
and on the other hand the plodder to his conclusions along 
the thorny path of conflicting facts, upon the wooden clogs 
of logic, both think and also intuit what appears to them 
as true. But cognition par excellence, so far as its thinking 
aspect is concerned, marks its own terminal as a judgment 
arrived at, in view of grounds which may seem either quite 
envisaged on account of the quickness of our flight from them 
to the terminal itself, or only dimly remembered because 
they lie far back upon the path which thought has travelled 
to this terminal. In any case, however, the distinctive 
feature of cognitive consciousness is this : we know only 



THINKING AND KNOWING 147 

when we alight upon the firm ground of a completed 
judgment. 

It is only in books on logic and psychology that judgment 
consists in a combining of sensations and ideas with other 
ideas or concepts, — all considered as mere mental products, 
or psychical states. In real life judgment is the positing of 
relations between the doings of actual things. This is true at 
least of all such judgment as brings knowledge with it or, in 
any way, conduces to knowledge. In other words, when we 
judge we not merely effect a subjective combination that is 
different from any combination possible for the ungoverned 
and flighty ideas, but we appear to ourselves to affirm the 
truth about a transaction in reality. There are several ways 
of approaching this claim as to the real nature and signifi- 
cance of the judgments which men actually make. For ex- 
ample, the claim may be approached from the logician's point 
of view. But this would lead us to emphasize the distinction 
of "form" and " content," and so, perhaps, would induce the 
fictitious doctrine, in the interests of the importance and in- 
tegrity of our particular science, that content has nothing to 
do with the true nature of judgment. It is the morphology 
of judgment, the doctrine of the form of all judging, — say 
most of its students, — which logic investigates. But here we 
must assert, with Schuppe, 1 that the distinction of form and 
content, as one of opposition or contrast, or as other than 
implying a reciprocal involvement, cannot possibly be main- 
tained. To borrow an illustration from Schopenhauer, the 
defect of neglecting the content shows the truth of the Indian 
proverb : " No lotus without a stem." 

The doctrine of a form of judgment that takes no account 
of the universal predicate of the content of judgment is a toy 
logic. It is much more a " logic of illusion " than is that pro- 
cedure of reason which Kant characterized by this opprobrious 
term. For this is just what judgment intrinsically is, — a 

1 Erkenntnisstheoretische Logik, p. 19. 



148 THINKING AND KNOWING 

positing of the existence of a concrete reality in relation to 
other realities. In the utterance of the mere form of a judg- 
ment we feel that we are not really judging ; or, in so far as 
we are really judging, we are judging something which differs 
from the mere form. We may be judging indeed that this 
form is the correct form of judgment ; but even this is a x 
judgment, only as it posits the existence of a concrete reality 
in relation to other realities : " So all men judge " is then our 
judgment ; or, perhaps, " This form of a judgment appears to 
me correct " (to accord with my own remembered experience 
and with that which I judge other men to have had). Much 
more obviously true is it that the distinction between form 
and content fails to satisfy the demands of epistemological 
criticism when those so-called secondary judgments, whose 
nature consists in relating concepts, are had in mind. For, 
whatever the actual psychological process answering to the 
term " a concept " may be understood to be, single concepts 
are never judgments : not even single concepts of relation. 
Nor do mere combinations of concepts form judgments ; it is , 
the added conviction of positing the truth of what is thought, 
which converts the conceptual flow of consciousness into a 
genuine act of judging. When the consciousness of objective 
validity is wanting, then judgment is wanting ; or if judgment 
seem to be there (as it is usually, if not universally, because no 
man satisfies himself long by toying with his logical faculty), 
then it is judgment affirming some other real relation than 
that which is clearly expressed by the related conceptions. 

The fuller description of the knowledge that comes by 
sense-perception and by self-consciousness, and that is called 
immediate in distinction from the knowledge which is inferred 
by virtue of its recognized connection with remoter grounds, 
must be waited for in order to defend further this view of judg- 
ment, as the form of thinking in which cognition is estab- 

7 O O 

lished. " I perceive the snow to be white ; " such a sentence 
throws the burden of the judgment upon the testimony of 



THINKING AND KNOWING 149 

self-consciousness. But when I give this form to the asser- 
tion of my act of accomplished cognition, I affirm a relation 
which is judged to exist between me and the extra-mentally 
existent thing. Thus far the judgment is certainly true, a 
mental positing of an actual relation. I do perceive the ob- 
ject-thing as my judgment asserts that I do. "The snow is 
white;" such a sentence throws the burden of the judgment, 
so to speak, upon the extra-mentally existent thing itself. It 
brings to my consciousness, and to the consciousness of all 
who hear and understand me, that the whiteness of the snow 
is a fact to be recognized by every one who can and will put 
himself in like conditions for judgment. In every judgment 
of perception, as an integral part of the cognitive act itself, 
there is discoverable the binding conviction that the object of 
perception exists and is actually so constituted as we imagine 
and think it to be. Judgment, in general, is not genuine Judg- 
ment, as distinguished from mere sequence of mental states, 
without a trans-subjective reference, an implication of the 
actual connection of different " momenta " in a really existent 
world. 

In saying this, however, we have already arrived at the 
conclusion that judgment involves, as a necessary condition 
of its own making, something more than mere judgment, if 
by the words " mere judgment " we limit our meaning to a 
form of thought. As a form of thought, there is also im- 
plied in judgment willing and feeling, — at least in the form 
of " feeling-sure ; " and besides, a postulated correspondence 
of the trans-subjective with that kind of active, feeling-full 
thought which all cognition involves. But this amounts to 
saying that in all actual judging the subject is doing some- 
thing more than judging, and is suffering in other forms than 
those of the impression made by the " ideation-stuff " of the 
judgment itself. Thus much is true in fact ; and it is truth 
which no theory of knowledge can afford to neglect. Post- 
poning for later chapters the further culture of this truth, 



150 THINKING AND KNOWING 

we may most fitly gather a handful of fruitage from the path 
which has just been traversed. 

It is not (as Hegel seems to teach) the doctrine of the 
concept, but the doctrine of the judgment in which we find : 
(1) negatively, the denial of the possibility of absolute scepti- 
cism, of dogmatic agnosticism, and of solipsistic idealism ; 
and (2) positively, the foundations for a valid epistemology 
and metaphysics. 

On the first point our analysis of the judgment has shown 
what all subsequent epistemological criticism will confirm, 
that a consistent and thorough agnosticism or sceptical ideal- 
ism is impossible as a theory of knowledge. It is impossible 
as theory, because it is contradictory of the very nature of 
that primary act of cognition from the criticism of which all 
attempt at an epistemological theory has its rise, and in the 
interpretation of which all the conclusions of any particular 
theory must repose. Cognition involves thinking in the form 
of judgment ; but judgment cannot be considered as a merely 
formal and subjective activity, because, as a matter of fact, 
it is not such an activity. It is the positing of reality, as 
diverse and yet necessarily capable of unification, — in a way 
full of feeling, and full of will, as well as full of thought. 
That is, he who judges, passes judgment upon the truth; 
and in doing this affirms both himself and his object to be 
something more and far other than mere thought-process and 
mere object of thought. 

Furthermore, the reality posited in every act of true judg- 
ment is posited as a related reality, — not only that it is, but 
what it is, so far as here and now judged, in the completed act 
of cognition. Here appears in the background the shadow of 
a postulate that may come to be recognized as bearing a noble 
and truly divine form. For the universal assumption of every 
judgment of immediate cognition is this: What is subjec- 
tively united in my act of judging belongs together in the unity 
of the really existent world. I unite these elements, which to 



THINKING AND KNOWING 151 

sense seem scattered and diverse, by judging them to belong 
together ; but I so unite them as to reveal my conviction that 
they are trans-subjectively combined, extra-mentally united 
in the unity of the Real. If this is not what my judgment 
means to me and to others, it falls short of fixing for me, or 
of expressing to them, my arrival at one of the firm points 
of standing called a cognition. 

How meagre, however, would the body of human knowl- 
edge appear, if it were reduced to the dimensions covered 
only by so-called " immediate " or " intuitive " acts of cogni- 
tion ! It is, pre-eminently, by thinking that men arrive at 
conceptual or inferential knowledge. And the form of stating 
such knowledge may be said to be the " logical judgment." 
Logical judgment is a synthesis effected between concepts ; 
therefore the kind of knowledge which it embodies and con- 
serves may be called " conceptual." It is built up by thinking 
one's way — at least, so this mental constructive work is de- 
scribed by the current books on logic — through concepts, that 
serve as " middle-terms," to other concepts ; it is a thought- 
process in which the consciousness of the truth of the final 
judgment, that marks the new point of cognition gained, is 
preceded by consciousness of the grounds, or reasons, from 
which this truth is inferred. Therefore, the kind of knowl- 
edge which this judgment embodies and conserves may be 
called " inferential." Great and even bitter controversy has 
been held between the partisans of the superior claims of 
immediate or intuitive and of conceptual or inferential knowl- 
edge, — the one accusing the other of narrowness, lack of 
science, and excessive devotion to fact, and the other retort- 
ing with accusations of excessive airiness, abstraction, and 
disregard for matter of fact. Separate faculties have even 
been devised for the attainment of these two kinds of knowl- 
edge ; and the controversy has overrun the boundaries of 
psychology and raged within, the fields of epistemology and 
metaphysics. Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer have agreed 



152 THINKING AND KNOWING 

in arraying Verstand against Vernunft, while differing much 
in their conception of the legitimate use of these terms. 

What now are the facts in the case which a critical epis- 
temology must decide ? What, as interpreted by a psychol- 
ogy which is true to actual mental life, is the nature and 
the growth of cognition as dependent upon acquired facility 
in thinking ? In brief, the principle of continuity reigns 
throughout ; and there is no break between the two kinds of 
knowledge, as there is no generic or specific difference in the 
employment of thinking faculty in gaining the two kinds. 
Judgment without both human understanding and human 
reason (whatever may be the distinctions set up between the 
two) is not human judgment. Understanding, that is not 
rational, is not human understanding. And reason, that is 
devoid of understanding or totally separated from its intelli- 
gent base, is a barren fiction ; if it exists anywhere, it is not 
the reason of man. Science, as a form of cognition, rests 
upon no different foundations from those upon which ordi- 
nary knowledge rests; and it involves no different forms of 
mental activity from those which every man employs in his 
work-a-day life. Moreover, the whole mental life and activ- 
ity is essentially the same, when we know the tree, the stone, 
the human face, over there opposite to us, as when we, by 
processes of subtle dialectic, or by the leap of faith, arrive 
at the atomic theory, or the cognition (or postulate) of the 
Personal Absolute called God. 

Further, negatively, it must be asserted that no entities, 
not even of the psychical sort, no mental products, no states 
of consciousness, corresponding to the customary description 
of the " concept," or the " syllogism," are anywhere to be 
found. 1 

Positive testimony of consciousness is not wanting, how- 
ever, to the important modifications in that mental attitude 

1 As to the true psychological nature of the concept, see " Psychology, De- 
scriptive and Explanatory," chapters xiv., xix., xx. 



THINKING AND KNOWING 153 

toward reality which the activity of thinking assumes in 
order to make possible a growth of knowledge. The u leap " 
to the judgment which expresses the finality of the thinking 
process, the journey to the terminal of cognition, may vary 
greatly in its degree of speed. The number of conscious 
" momenta " that can be remembered, or recognized as fus- 
ing in the judgment, so to speak, may also vary. Immediate 
judgment is judgment with little or no clear consciousness 
of the grounds ; but judgment, as the recognized result of a 
reasoning process, is judgment with more or less of clear 
consciousness of its own grounds. It is the former kind of 
judgment which is prominent in both sense-perception and 
self-consciousness; it is the latter which the construction 
of scientific knowledge demands. The sensation-content 
involved in the thinking process, and upon the basis of which 
thinking proceeds, varies greatly in quantity. It also differs 
qualitatively ; so that sometimes judgment is absorbed in 
the determination of the size or quality of a thing, some- 
times in the nature and meaning of an affection of Self. 
Especially does the form taken by the postulate of, the feel- 
ing of belief in, and the more or less voluntary seizure upon, 
reality differ with the different kinds of judgment involved 
in the cognitive act. Sometimes the real object appears as 
an undoubted envisagement ; sometimes as an inference so 
doubtful that we hesitate to call the resulting judgment a 
cognition rather than a mere opinion or belief. These forms 
of variation in the thinking process, and in its result, occasion 
marked differences between our necessitated belief in the 
reality of the known object of sense or of self-consciousness, 
and our quest after certified truth as to the general relations 
and laws of minds and of things. In the former case we 
feel that the reality is a fact, — given to us, not as the form 
of our thoughts, but with the irresistible conviction that the 
reality is there and that we are in commerce with it. In 
the latter case, we feel that the form of our thoughts is 



154 THINKING AND KNOWING 

a true picture of the forms, in reality, of minds or of 
tilings. 

In all conceptual knowledge, as in so called immediate 
knowledge, it is the judgment which constitutes the final 
form of the thinking that enters into the cognition. Indeed, 
psychologically considered, conception is itself a modification 
of the content and succession of our conscious states in which 
judgments are the only possible representatives of reality. 
The very process of conception consists in having a number 
of highly schematized ideas, that are judged to be related in 
certain definite rather than other ways. The moment, how- 
ever, we come to inquire after the truth of this process of 
so-called conception, we find that the inquiry ends in a de- 
mand for the truth of our own relating acts, — that is, of the 
judgments themselves. But to inquire into the " truth " of 
judgments, it must be assumed that they are capable of being 
patterned, so to speak, after the actual relations of things. 
Here again, then, we see that it is the true doctrine of judg- 
ment which must be relied upon for the validating of human 
thought about things. Every so-called concept implies both 
mental representations as its content, and also judging ac- 
tivity as giving form to its content. The determinate flow 
of the successive judgments toward that one judgment which 
posits the truth which the mind is seeking, and the conscious- 
ness of this flow as being determined in its connections by the 
facts of experience, are the necessary elements of every act of 
reasoning. Here, again, the result can be called knowledge 
only upon the supposition that the judgments which enter into 
the process of reasoning have something far other than mere 
correctness of form. 

What follows, then, in order to vindicate the claim made 
by all the more highh r abstract and conceptual forms of 
thought, to be a means or vehicle of cognition ? These forms 
certainly make this claim, since they present themselves as 
a series of judgments leading up to a final judgment in which, 



THINKING AND KNOWING 155 

as in a court of highest jurisdiction, truth appears enthroned. 
And if the claim does not carry its own vindication, or some- 
how admit of being vindicated from without, all science is 
convicted of giving the lie to its very name. For it is in its 
concepts, and in its judgments relating these concepts, that 
the truth of science consists. But here, again, the very nature 
of judgment, as it enters into all acts both of conception and 
of reasoning, becomes the invincible fortress against the ex- 
tremes of agnosticism and of sceptical idealism. 

Consider, however, in brief, what seems postulated as to 
the nature of the cognitive process, and as to its claims to 
truth, in the very doctrine of the concept. This doctrine 
shows that the mental process of conception is indeed a 
change, but a change subject to laws. The character of this 
process is changeable ; were it not so, growth of knowledge 
would be impossible. But it has also the permanent in it; 
and were this not so, truth would be impossible of attainment 
in the form of conceptual knowledge. What further is im- 
plicate as to the really existent, thus known in the form of 
the conceptual judgment ? It, too, this object itself, the 
Reality known, must actually change ; but not all at once, 
so to speak, or at random, and in a wild unregulated way. 
It, too, must change in time, and according to fixed and 
immanent ideas. The fixedness of the object, as given to 
conceptual knowledge, in contrast with the changing activity 
of the conceiving and knowing subject, is itself only a more 
definite measure both of change and of permanence : shall 
we say — of the permanence of the Idea as immanent in the 
changing states of the object ? But I, too, the subject, can- 
not change in an unlimited way, either as respects the time 
or the direction of change. If, however, my series of judg- 
ments is to be thought of as true (and if they are not to 
be thus thought of, then conceptual knowledge is impossible 
for me), the changes in me must, in some sort and to some 
degree, follow the laws of the changes in the object. To 



156 THINKING AND KNOWING 

know any Thing, I must conceive of it as it really is, as main- 
taining a certain fidelity to its own nature, while constantly 
changing its particular manifestations toward me, toward 
other minds, and toward other things. Let us try to repre- 
sent this by a formula : And let S stand for me, the subject ; 
but stand for the object which I conceive of as always 
acting according to its nature when truly conceived. Then, in 
some sort, it must be possible that S\ S 2 , S s , S*, = a , CP, O, 
O v . That is, I can representatively judge what is, con- 
sidered as passing through a series of states ranging from 
1 toward oo. But as to the meaning of the sign of equality 
(the = which stands between the series S and the series 0), 
we have as yet only a clue. 

Now, undoubtedly, there is no little metaphysics as well 
as epistemology concealed in the foregoing paragraph ; and 
one is not compelled to take all of either until both have 
been further criticised and discussed. Meantime the postulate 
may perhaps as well be left in a form given to it by Lotze : 
" The real world does not fall asunder, atomistisch, into 
merely singular constituents, each of which is incomparable 
with the others ; but between its contents, similarities, kin- 
ship, and relations exist." The " petrifaction," and then the 
objectifying and converting into realities, of concepts, has 
much to answer for in the history of philosophy. It was 
one of Hegel's merits of intention that he aimed to do away 
with this. But, alas ! for the relapse of some of his disciples, 
who seem to have petrified and then hypostasized the very 
conception of " process " itself. On the ground of psychology, 
a certain merit — though largely of a negative order — is 
due to writers like Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and 
Hume. But if the view they controverted seemed to con- 
tradict the descriptive history of mental phenomena, the 
view they advocated left all the foundations of science either 
in the clouds of emotion or in the underground of blind and 
unverifiable instinct. The doctrine of judgment carries with 



THINKING AND KNOWING 157 

it, in the concrete facts of experience and in the implicates 
which an analysis of experience reveals, the correctives for 
both of these erroneous extremes. 

Further illustration and confirmation of similar postulates 
follows from a consideration of the way in which men reason 
and argue about what shall be accepted and esteemed as 
" truth." Thought is, indeed, subject to its own laws, to 
the principles which define logical necessity. Actuality is 
what it is, as fact ; and that is the last word about it. Yes, 
but most of what I know, and of what the race knows, has 
come by those processes of thinking which are properly de- 
. scribed as reasoning from accepted grounds to new conclusions 
that, when the grounds are valid and the form of reasoning 
correct, assume the claims of knowledge. So that here, again, 
it is not the mere necessity of a logical determination, but 
the comprehension of actuality by human cognitive faculty, 
which is the law and the goal of human science. It is this 
assumption of an actual relation, common to thought and to 
things, through some middle third, which gives us the right 
to speak of real specific resemblances, real specific differences, 
real universal relations called laws, etc. What, indeed, is 
the ultimate ground on which is assumed the applicability 
of any process of syllogistic reasoning to real things ? And 
how shall epistemological theory account for the larger fact 
of race experience, that the attempt to apply syllogistic reason- 
ing to real things is successful in enlarging the knowledge 
of the race ? Only on this ground and in this way : a real 
conformity to law exists and is cognizable according to the 
principle of sufficient reason. 

Bat so-called syllogistic acts of reasoning are, in reality, 
successions of judgments in which the mind climbs from step- 
ping-stone to stepping-stone along the path of cognition,— 
clad with the full armor of feeling and of will, and of all 
that belongs to the mind's life, as it takes each step. Never 
does the mind appear to itself so lightly weighted and so 



158 THINKING AND KNOWING 

thin a ghost as to seem merely to be doing a bit of logical 
thinking. In fact, in the succession and character of its 
judgments, as it pursues the truth, it rarely follows the form 
of the syllogism at all. For reasoning, too, is not capable 
of being understood merely content-wise. The rather does 
judgment, only when already affirmed as familiar and ex- 
pressive of truth, suggest and stimulate other judgment 
which may perchance, but not necessarily, contain unfamiliar 
and even new truth. 

Suppose, for example, I judge, on the basis of successive 
observations, that Uranus is not behaving as she should in 
view of what I know of her relations to her companion planets. 
I judge next that there may be, or there must be, another 
companion planet of which no knowledge has been had as 
yet. I then look to the place where this new planet should 
be in order to give grounds for the irregular behavior of 
Uranus ; and now Neptune is " intuitively " known to be 
there. Or suppose I am told of a man who did not die ; and I 
exclaim: "No, for men universally die." Indeed, it belongs 
to the very nature of man to die. But evidence is offered 
that such a case of an immortal man did in fact occur; and 
reasons are presented why I may alter my former judgment 
without disturbing too fundamentally the entire structure of 
my experience. And now I may hesitate to repeat my judg- 
ment; or I may form a new judgment admitting cases of 
exception to the "universal" law; or I may adhere to my 
judgment in its earlier form. Such is the flux in the nar- 
row field of the individual man's cognition; such, too, is 
the flux in the larger field of the scientific acquirements of 
the race. If the assumption of an objective connection is 
merely feigned and subjective, as the sceptic would have us 
suppose, then knowledge by processes of reasoning is impos- 
sible. But if the objective connection is itself a universally 
fixed substrate, a kind of unchanging being of things, as 
certain dogmatists would present it to imagination, then the 



THINKING AND KNOWING 159 

life we think we cognize is gone out of the real world. An 
actual happening, indeed, but a happening under the regu- 
lating principle of ideas would seem to be the only postulate 
as to the nature of Reality which will validate the attainment 
of knowledge by processes of reasoning. 

Further with reference to the problems raised by the 
analysis of this chapter, there is no need to inquire at the 
present time. Already it is at least apparent what some of 
these problems are ; and certain of them are obviously meta- 
physical in character. Among the more definitely epistemo- 
logical questions involved are such as follow: What are, 
more precisely, those laws of thought — of judgment, con- 
ception, and reasoning — whose objective validity is implied 
in all that knowledge which comes by thought ? On what 
more ultimate grounds than any thus far uncovered must our 
confidence in the validity of these laws be placed ? What 
may be discovered regarding the relations in which we, as 
cognizing subjects, stand to the Reality made valid for us in 
our processes of cognition ? How may we test truth, and 
discover error, and so think as to have our judgments ratify 
their claim to real knowledge ? How shall the total faculty 
of human cognition be defended against the attacks which 
would destroy, or most severely shake, its very foundations ? 
And, finally, what view of the World-All seems best to 
comport with the essential dignity and worth of human 
cognition ? 

But these are profound and difficult questions; and per- 
haps some of them are unanswerable. At all events, they 
must be approached through a truer and more comprehen- 
sive conception of the psychological nature and growth of 
knowledge. 



CHAPTER VI 

KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

THE psychology of feeling is still in a most unsatisfactory 
condition. Nor are the reasons for this condition 
profound or difficult to discover; although when discovered 
and reflected upon, they turn out to be such as to encour- 
age only a partial hope of their amelioration or ultimate 
removal. These reasons are partly historical ; but, chiefly, 
they spring out of the very nature of the subject of all psy- 
chological inquiry. Until comparatively recent times the 
entire movement of the science of mental life and all the 
interests of its students were directed toward a better under- 
standing of so-called sensations, ideas, and thoughts or other 
logical processes. To think = to be a soul, was an indis- 
putable formula of the Cartesian psychology. And when 
this rational psychology was most vigorously contested, the 
formula substituted ran somewhat as follows : To be a tabula 
rasa for sensations, and a play-room for the disporting of 
revived and associated images of sensations = all there is 
of soul. We have already seen, too, how the critical theory 
of knowledge, in the hands of its great modern author, con- 
fined itself to the formal laws of thinking faculty. 

This relative disregard of the psychology of feeling and 
volition, as they enter so abundantly into that conduct 
which has been called three fourths, or even seven eighths of 
life, accounts in part for the meagreness of recognition given 
by cpistemological doctrine to these aspects of mind. But, 
of late, psychology has been cultivated in a more biological 
and interesting way. Psychological analysis, with the in- 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 161 

definitely greater subtlety and more varied and searching 
appliances that characterize its modern types, shows what 
an exceedingly complex affair human mental life really is. 
Into all this life enter an indescribably great number of 
" moments " or influential factors. Investigation is rapidly 
advancing in the recognition, at least, of these complex 
factors ; and thus, as a purely descriptive science, psychology 
has recently made large and commendable advances. Some- 
thing has also been done toward explaining anew the primary 
truths of mental life, — this, by way of discovering the laws 
of the interaction of the factors, or, more frequently, of 
giving to psychological facts, already well known, the 
appearance of a scientific character by stating them in terms 
of exact formulas proved by psycho-physical measurements. 
But there are certain fields of the psychic life which are 
naturally difficult of penetration, or even of entrance with 
the surveying instruments — the theodolite, the chain, the 
stakes, and the poles — of the modern psychologist. Here 
effectively work the obscure hereditary instincts, the blind 
unreasoning beliefs that creep about the very roots of the 
earliest cognitions. Here occur vague assumptions of values, 
impulsive and often spasmodic and inexplicable leaps, over 
the barriers of fact and of calmly reasoned conclusions, 
through atmosphere charged with the electricity of emotion, 
into the very heart of Reality itself. Here is done the artistic 
building, under the influence of sesthetical and ethical feel- 
ings, whose products cannot safely, and indeed cannot at all, 
be kept out of our most ordinary experiences; for they, too, 
belong to the general structure of human knowledge. 

It is not to be wondered at, then, that introspective and 
experimental psychology finds the greatest difficulty in com- 
ing to an agreement concerning the nature and laws of that 
part of our mental life whose very nature seems to free it 
from all obedience to discoverable law. For there is no 
greater "psychologist's fallacy" than to identify thoughts 

n 



162 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

about the feelings with the actuality of the feelings them- 
selves. But the inevitable difficulties of the subject are not, 
just now, the principal obstacle in the way of its gradual 
conquest by scientific observers. There is an opinion con- 
cerning the nature of all feeling, which is held, perhaps, by 
the majority of writers on psychology, although intelligently 
and vigorously combated by a few of the first rank, but which 
is so incredible that its naked statement might well seem 
equivalent to its disproof. This opinion identifies all human 
feeling with the pleasure- pain series, and all variations 
of feeling, as such, with quantitative changes in this series. 
Some advocates of this opinion class all the feelings with 
the sensations; since all pleasure-pain (which = all feeling) 
belongs to the sensational content of consciousness. And 
thus from high to low, as estimated even qualitatively and 
by a standard of assthetical or ethical values, the account of 
the rich and varied affective phenomena of man's life be- 
comes like a sum in algebra that has only one indeterminate 
quantity. The psychology of feeling is then only a question 
of how large is the value in any case of this x ; and whether 
it is a case of + x or of — x. Sancta simplicitas ! but not of 
the feeling soul of man ; the rather of the analytic mind of 
such psychologists. 

The confutation of so inadequate a view of human feeling, 
by facing it with the facts of consciousness when investi- 
gated in thoroughly analytic fashion, belongs to descriptive 
psychology. 1 In the two just previous chapters it has been 
shown how the psychology of knowledge in general, and, in 
a more particular way, of judgment as the constitutive 
thinking element of knowledge, recognizes the function of 
feeling. But in order to lay a sound and comprehensive 
basis for the most important epistemological conclusions, it 
is necessary that the part which feeling plays in all cogni- 
tion should be further investigated. 

1 See Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, chapters ix., x., xxiii., xxiv. 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 163 

It is often assumed, even by those who do not accept the 
identification of the entire life of feeling with the changing 
quanta of the pleasure-pain series, that cognition is espe- 
cially devoid of feeling, if not actually antagonistic to 
feeling. But an act of cognition is the fullest expression of 
the fact of mental life. When I know, then I am — full of 
life, full-orbed in my being, " all in it, " as it were, and as 
at no other time. But if the " I, " that am now come to the 
fullest realization of my Self in the act of cognition, am 
essentially a being of feeling, as well as a thinking and 
willing subject of states, then how can this act of cognition 
itself be constituted otherwise than as a feeling-full affair ? 
And how can a large variety and profound depth of feeling 
be separable from any act of cognition, not to say the con- 
trary, or contradictory of any such act ? 

It is, indeed, a fact of universal experience, and a truth of 
general recognition in psychology, that a certain kind and 
amount of emotional excitement is unfavorable to knowledge. 
Intense anger is blind; and so are all the other forms of 
feeling when raised to the emotional stage of intensity. 
The psychology of the emotions shows that their indispen- 
sable characteristic is a strong feeling of the bodily and 
mental disturbances already brought about in the organism 
and in the train of associated ideas or the succession of 
combined thoughts. But excessive disturbance of the ideas 
and thoughts prevents our arriving at a state of assured cog- 
nition. How, then, can much feeling, of whatever kind, be 
otherwise than unfavorable to knowledge ? This question 
has been answered by the proposal of a law of consciousness 
which would make feeling and knowledge vary inversely. 

There is, however, another side to the influence of the 
affective factors upon our states of cognition; or, rather, 
there are several different sides to be considered in inter- 
preting correctly our experience of feeling. First, all 
conscious states fall under the general principle of limi- 



164 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

tation or finiteness; and more multifoldness of content, 
or quantity of psychic energy, than a given limit cannot 
be attained in any psychosis whatever. There is, there- 
fore, a certain truth in the figure of speech which rep- 
resents the Ego as being unable to have more than so 
much life in any one field of consciousness; and if this 
limit is nearly reached, by way of absorption in some appe- 
tite or passion, there is, of course, little left of psychic 
energy with which to do any thinking. And thinking, cul- 
minating in judgment, has been shown to be necessary to 
cognition. Our experience, however, might seem to warrant 
us in saying, not so much that rage, or grief, or jealousy, 
or even any highly emotional form of ethical and religious 
and sesthetical feeling, makes knowledge impossible, as that 
the more or less voluntary refusal to think makes these 
forms of emotion possible. Rage, etc., makes a man blind 
intellectually ; but, conversely, the intellectually blind man 
falls into a rage, etc. Nor is this conclusion the result of 
mere juggling with terms. The man of narrow mind has 
less room in his mind for any combination of the three 
aspects, or fundamental forms, of all mental life; he can 
live less completely and largely at any moment of time. 

An animal indulgence of the intense emotions must also 
be recognized, in the case of which the intellectual elements 
sink to the corresponding grade of an animal consciousness. 
The emotional frenzy of the human animal is a state of 
consciousness not greatly unlike that of the enraged bull or 
tiger, the jealous dog, the panic-stricken deer. Then the 
man runs amuck at the objects of his hate, or runs pell-mell 
away from the objects of his dread. The division of the 
army " loses its head " and flees amain ; the political or 
ecclesiastical party, or the majority of the community " go it 
blind," as men say. 

Here, however, we may interpose the somewhat startling 
but by no means impertinent question : Is God, then, to be 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 165 

conceived of as a clear-cut, cold "logic-engine," without any 
emotions of anger, sympathy, or sorrow, by which to link 
him, heart to heart, with the blundering, sorrowing, and 
striving children of men ? And are they made in his image 
only in so far as they can " think his thoughts after him " 
without any chance to win the ability to pattern their 
emotions, too, after those belonging to the divine life ? 
Without attempting at present to suggest an answer to this 
inquiry, we return to examine more closely our affective 
experiences as men. And here we recognize the indispen- 
sable cognitive value of certain strong emotions. Some 
truths — it is matter of common observation — can be reached 
most easily and readily (if, indeed, they can be reached at 
all otherwise) through the medium of feeling. To love, to 
hate, to long for, and to grieve for, — these are exercises of 
the soul without experience of which certain sides of 
reality, and certain profound truths touching the nature 
of reality, can never be apprehended at all. In the experi- 
ence of a " grand passion " the mind not infrequently wins 
its way, in brief instants of time, to a judgment which it 
would take long to reach if one had to plod along the 
paths of inductive or demonstrative reasoning. For that is 
also true to which Browning celebrates the way in his 
exhortation : — 

" So you ignore, 
So you make perfect the present, — condense, 
In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment, 
Thought and feeling and soul and sense." 

The intimate " connection " of feeling with knowledge is, 
indeed, a matter of fact which no student of the human 
mind would think of denying. But a matter-of-fact con- 
nection between the two so-called faculties of emotion and 
of intellect is a superficial affair in comparison with the 
truth which we are desirous of enforcing. This truth is, 
the rather, that no cognition at all is possible without the 



166 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

presence of affective and emotional factors in the very act 
of cognition, or without the influence of such factors over 
the nature of the cognitive process itself. To know is to feel 
as well as to think; and feeling is as truly an indispen- 
sable "moment" in, or aspect of, knowledge as are those 
factors which our analysis assigns to intellectual faculty. 
Nor can the slightest conception be formed of what knowl- 
edge would seem like, or actually be, if it were not rich also 
in content of feeling. The illustration of this psychological 
tenet, which will subsequently be found of fundamental 
importance for epistemology, needs now to be preceded by 
reminding ourselves of two truths respecting the nature of 
all feeling. First, then, and strictly speaking, the actual 
nature of the various affective phenomena of human con- 
sciousness, quoad affective, cannot be construed or conveyed 
in the form of conceptions. The nature of feeling is in being 
felt. To know what any particular form of feeling is, there 
is no other way than the self-conscious envisagement of that 
form of feeling in one's own psychic life. To know what 
any feeling is in another consciousness can be accomplished 
only when in some way — perhaps, indeed, by the language 
of feeling, which is of the analogical type — one's own con- 
sciousness is definitively determined into a corresponding 
form of feeling. 

But, second, the same discriminating consciousness which 
is necessary to every self-conscious state, since without 
thinking we cannot know our own states, must separate and 
identify, and thus recognize, the affective factors, or the 
emotional aspect, of the cognitive processes. Thus we 
become able, in some sort, to describe and faithfully dis- 
course about that in our experience which cannot be put, 
strictly speaking, info conceptual terms. Thus much of 
truth there is in Schopenhauer's loose way of interpret- 
ing consciousness when he exhorts us about as follows : 
" Would'st know what feelings of thine are, and what those 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 167 

of other men are like? Then look within thyself, and, 
whatever thou findest wholly incapable of being made an 
object of conceptual knowledge, call that feeling; regard it 
carefully, and when thou seest thy fellows giving the signs 
thou wilt learn by experience to recognize, then believe 
that they, too, are feeling similarly." 

Human feelings, so far as they both constitute and modify 
the cognitive processes, may be somewhat roughly but con- 
veniently divided into three classes, according to the char- 
acter of the relations which they sustain, as feelings, to 
those processes. These three classes we will call the im- 
pulsive, the regulative, and the integrating — leaving the 
meaning of the last term to be explained later on. These 
are, perhaps, not so much different classes of feeling as 
different uses of the feelings in the complete cognitive 
function. 

Without that varied impulse from feeling, — which does 
not come simply as an external push that ceases before the 
movement of the cognitive process begins, but also continues 
within the process as its living spring, — this cognitive 
process itself cannot be understood. In all cognition, it is 
feeling that starts and keeps in motion the process of think- 
ing. Here is where the function of the instinctive impulses, 
the natural desires, and the various forms of the sense of 
need, make themselves felt as an ever present spur to the 
beginning and to the growth of knowledge. It is as a 
hungry and thirsty and therefore venturesome little animal 
that the babe starts to find out how things taste and smell 
and feel ; what, in brief, they are good for, to serve the 
interests of his own feeling-full and strong appetites and 
sensations. The fundamental uses of the senses, and the 
important practical qualities of things as answering to these 
uses, are learned only in this way. Nor let it be thought 
that this impulse to the growing process of the primitive 
cognitions, as it arises in the various forms of restless 



168 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

desire and painful need, is something to be reckoned with 
in a way extraneous to the growth of the cognitions them- 
selves. The rather is it true that the first description of 
any "Thing," that which the thing is to the child, can be 
told only as a history of the rise and fall, the swelling and 
contracting, of confused complexes of feelings of craving 
and of their progressive satisfaction, together with more 
objective sensations which are getting bound together into 
a percept, or mental image. Take the feelings out of this 
complex process, — actually abstract them, after the fashion 
in which the psychologist theoretically abstracts them, — 
and the whole experience becomes a pale, thin affair out of 
which no cognition of a Self as related to a world of separate 
Things could ever be evolved. 

Nor are the feelings which belong to the soul of the infant, 
and have reference chiefly to other selves, rather than to 
things, less influential in arousing and giving vital impulse 
and coloring to the whole life of cognition. The earliest 
"proofs" of the existence of other sentient beings are laid 
chiefly in the impulses of altruistic feeling, and in the power 
these impulses have over the mind to start and to regulate 
the act of cognition. Moreover, the first recognized content 
of any other self than myself is far less a conception than it 
is a mixture of warm and interesting feelings, produced 
largely under the psychological principles of imitation and 
suggestion, and connected in experience with certain pro- 
jected sensations. For even the adult, the persistence and 
obtrusive presence in his own consciousness of these de- 
veloped altruistic emotions is the impregnable fortress 
within him to which, under the assaults of sceptical ideal- 
ism, retreats his belief in the extra-mental existence of 
his fellowmen. And if the retroactive shudder before a 
logical solipsism is strongest when one thinks of the conse- 
quences of denying to one's self a knowledge of the reality 
of the members of one's own family or friendly circle, one 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 169 

is only carrying out in adult fashion the influences of 
those infantile and instinctive feelings which first revealed 
the existence of the same beings to the child. 1 

Who that knows anything of the psychology of childhood 
can doubt that the impulse to attain a knowledge of other 
persons is chiefly given in the cravings for sympathy and in 
the instinctive exercise of sympathy? Both things and 
persons are first known as objects of interested curiosity, 
which may become instruments of pleasurable or painful 
feeling to the child ; but persons are first known as that sort 
of things which can feel with the child, and can induce it 
to feel with them. The need of an object for our feelings 
of sympathy is as truly a human need, is as surely determined 
to create something for its own satisfaction, as is the need of 
an object which shall explain any other form of our experi- 
ence. Penetration of the spear's point into the oaken board 
or between the joints of the armor in its search for the 
victim's heart, would no more take place without a strong 
thrust behind the shaft, than would "penetration" of the 
existence and nature in reality of our fellow-men without 
the push of this passionate interest in them. Modern psy- 
chology is working vigorously with the principles of sugges- 
tion and imitation to help on an understanding of the 
origins and earliest development of our life of ideation, 
thought, and knowledge. And in spite of needed cautions 
against overworking these principles, it is accomplishing 
many valuable results through the explanations they afford. 
But without the impulsive and regulating presence of the 
altruistic feelings which always accompany these principles 
in the real life of the mind, neither the origins nor the 
development of intellectual life can be explained. 

Moreover, special forms of those feelings which " connect " 
us with our fellows are indispensable to the explanation of 

1 See the criticism of M. Flournoy's position in the author's " Philosophy of 
Mind," pp. 28 f. 



170 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

the special forms of cognition which arise with reference to 
them. For example, the knowledge of men as actually 
linked together into a society, with common interests and 
inter-communicating destinies, requires the feeling of de- 
pendence. Here may be noted the use of this feeling which 
has been made by some writers on the philosophy of religion 
as leading to the faith in, and the vision of, God. The 
babe against its mother's breast is acquiring an unforgettable 
lesson, chiefly communicated through feeling, in its actual 
dependence on other existence than its own, for well-being 
and for being at all. How, indeed, should he ever be led 
to know that other being is, if he were left in the feeling 
of his own self-sufficiency ? Of course, to question this truth 
becomes absurd as soon as we understand the history of the 
origin and development of the conception of Self. For this 
history is impossible of actual accomplishment, as it is 
impossible of description, without taking both self-feelings 
and feelings referent to other selves constantly into the 
account. Especially does that knowledge on which depends 
the entire life of the race, its propagation and continuance 
in history, and the whole structure of the family and the 
State, require for its achievement and explanation the 
impulsive and regulative action of special forms of feeling. 
Indeed, in some of these relations, the emotional factors so 
largely predominate over those of ideation and judgment 
that the language of feeling rather than of intellect best 
expresses them. Nor is it without a profound philosophical 
import that the specialized form of intercourse between the 
sexes is, in the Hebrew and other languages, described in 
terms of cognition. 

But it is even more important to notice that in the con- 
sciousness of the child almost exclusively, and in the con- 
sciousness of the adult very largely, other beings than Self 
are known only representatively, by an act of imagination 
which projects into them our experiences of feeling with 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 171 

ourselves. What is "the other" — which is not its self but 
is another self — to the consciousness of the child? Could 
language accurately define the actual experience of the child 
when it knows the animal, or the mate, with which it plays, 
the parent or the nurse that tends and controls it, how 
would such definition run ? Surely not in terms of pure 
thinking chiefly. Almost as surely not, for the most part, in 
terms of ideation. It is rather a certain determinate flow 
of his own emotional consciousness which defines another 
sentient being to the consciousness of the child. For it the 
very being of the object — as fact, and marked off qualita- 
tively from other beings — is largely a compound of its own 
centrifugally determined feelings. The dog is understood 
to be a something which differs from that other thing, a 
stone, not merely in color, shape, size, and mobility, but 
also and chiefly in this : it feels as the boy feels, — hungry, 
thirsty, hurt, mad, spiteful, or pleased, glad, friendly. In- 
deed, a description of the process of cognition can no more 
be made complete while neglecting the course of suggested, 
imitative, and sympathetic feelings than while overlooking 
the succession of ideas and judgments with which these feel- 
ings are fused. Any child is much more capable of under- 
standing its parent as a being that, in all the simpler forms 
of feeling with which it has itself had experience, feels as 
it knows itself to feel, than as a being that reasons and 
judges in terms familiar to itself. And in how much of all 
this are all men only children ! Were it not so, indeed, 
human beings could not know each other with any approach 
to completeness, or with any prospect of realizing some good 
practical purpose. 

In this connection should be noticed the essential effect 
upon the process of cognition which is produced by the 
pleasurable or painful tone inseparable from most of our 
feelings. The reality of the world, both of things and of 
selves, and the actuality of the events happening in this 



172 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

world, are " ground " into us through the changes in our 
pleasure-pain series which these things and selves produce. 
When the dog makes itself known to the teasing boy as a 
something that feels hurt and mad, it sends home to the 
boy's brain and heart one sure item of knowledge with force- 
ful "tooth and claw." Thus the boy learns his truth about 
the animal, and ceases from further critical and sceptical 
experimentation in the same direction. In the future, 
doubts do not arise, — that the dog really is, and that the boy 
knows what the dog is. Severely idealistic philosophers 
have always jeered at the common-sense but antiquated 
doctor who refuted idealism with blows from his staff. 
And, indeed, there is no logical " argument " in blows. 
Perhaps such idealism can never be refuted if it chooses to 
satisfy itself with what are called "mere" arguments. But 
all arguments go back to the actual facts of our manifold 
experience ; however they may fly abroad in regions of thin 
air for many a splendid hour, if they wish to get general 
acceptance they must alight again upon the grounds of 
experience, and face the facts of daily life. Now the uni- 
versal fact of daily experience is that mere argument does 
not result in the cognition which affirms the trans-subjective 
reality of its object. But the world of things is actually 
known as hurting us most awfully and much of the time; 
and for the rest of the time, as giving to us more or less of 
pleasure. Now I do not like that pain; I hate it; and I 
will not have it in my consciousness. By a prompt, instinc- 
tive, and defensive movement, into which little of thought 
or of reasoning enters, my motor organism reacts against it; 
then I get hurt again and even more badly. What now must 
this experience mean to me as evincing the nature of the 
object of cognition ? The answer which springs from the most 
hidden and deepest roots of consciousness, as a forthputting 
of a judgment that is born in the affective rather than the 
intellective nature, affirms: My object is not merely my 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 173 

idea. That which I so hate, and will not, that which is so 
often opposing and thwarting my will, and making all my 
sensibilities quiver with anguish, is not at one with me. 
It is my other, and not my self. It is not my nature to have 
it so ; it is the nature of things and of other selves that it 
is so. 

Further confirmation and illustration of the necessary part 
which this class of feelings take in all human cognition 
will be offered when we come to consider the terms on 
which selves and things get differentiated in the develop- 
ment of the intellectual life. 

There is no need to dwell in this connection upon the 
well-known influence which comes to the development of 
knowledge in the individual and in the race from the intel- 
lectual feeling of curiosity. This feeling is, indeed, to be 
recognized as belonging to human nature in general, and as 
affording the motif for the ordinary, as well as for the most 
splendid acquisitions of knowledge. Under its influence 
the child searches into the nature and uses of things, and so 
builds up the experience which is necessary to its own safety 
and to its very life. Of its intensity in certain cases 
Augustine bore witness when he declared, "My soul is on 
fire to know. " Plato made a certain divine Eros the only 
avenue to philosophic cognition; and the Prussian queen 
affirmed her desire to die because then she should surely 
know the things as to the truth of which even Leibnitz could 
not tell her. 

There is, however, another important group of feelings 
concerned in all our cognitive processes, whose function is 
mainly regulative of these processes themselves. This regu- 
lative office is performed by certain logical feelings as well 
as by the ethical and the sesthetical. In matters of art the 
fact is almost universally recognized that feeling takes the 
lead of judgment. The pronouncement primarily made in 
an affection with a peculiar feeling-tone is the basis for the 



174 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

judgment affirming a completed act of cognition. Nor will 
it avail to object that we are here dealing with matters of 
mere opinion rather than of genuine cognition. The Kennen 
of the artist, as well as the Wissen of the man of science, is 
a form of knowledge; and the truth of the world of real 
beings and actual relations comes through the conscious 
attitudes toward it of the former, perhaps quite as much as 
of the latter. Although, also, there is a broad shadowy 
region in all sesthetical matters, where opinion or belief 
rather than knowledge is all that can be claimed, some 
aesthetical judgments, at least, are affirmative of sure posi- 
tions taken by the process of cognition. For example, I am 
listening to a learner on the violin who, in an adjoining 
room, is running over scales, sometimes correctly but some- 
times striking a tone which I immediately judge incorrect. 
By what means do I judge this tone to be out of place ; or 
rather, what is the meaning of the judgment, "It is incor- 
rect," as expressive of actual facts of consciousness? Is it 
not chiefly this, that the feelings of expectation with which 
I awaited the next tone in the succession have been disap- 
pointed by the actual feelings which have taken possession 
of my consciousness ? The feeling, as such, is disagreeable, 
and this quality belongs to my subjective state of an affec- 
tive kind; the feeling is not agreeable, it is painful. But 
I judge the sensation of musical sound to be wrongly placed 
in the series, — as much out of place as though the child, in 
learning to count, had offered the series 1, 2, 3, 7 as an 
example of correct counting. Besides the disagreeableness 
of the feeling subjectively considered, there is in my con- 
sciousness — what is not the same thing, but has a necessary 
objective reference — a feeling of dissonance, of the disa- 
greement of this sound with the one which should occur at 
its place in the series. The feeling is not the product of 
the judgment; but the judgment is the expression of the 
feeling. 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 175 

Now in all such cases as the foregoing it may be argued 
that the judgment itself has no objective reference or objec- 
tive value. Its total import should, therefore, be stated as 
follows : " I am disagreeably affected by this tone at this place 
in the series; and, therefore, I conclude that the series is 
not a good, correct — that is, a pleasant — series. " But 
such an account of this characteristic consciousness does not 
recognize all the actual facts in the case. For I am as sure 
that I am proclaiming a truth to which other properly con- 
stituted natures will immediately and unfailingly give assent, 
when I make this quasi -adsthetical judgment, as when I assert 
that the violin is being played in the next room. Indeed, I 
am much surer of the objective validity of my judgment in 
affirming the discord than of my judgment in localizing the 
origin of the sound. Let it be reaffirmed that, after all, 
the judgment must be taken as purely relative to my con- 
sciousness, merely relative, and I may at once unhesitat- 
ingly deny that this is so. The judgment cannot be so 
taken, because that is not what the judgment means. 
It means to affirm an act of cognition, good for myself and 
for others also. It is not, indeed, good for those who are 
wholly or partially tone-deaf ; it is not even good, as yet, for 
the child who is unconsciously making the incorrect tone so 
disagreeable to me. But the reply is ready : the same thing 
is true of all our judgments of things as obtained by sense- 
perception. The child would not notice different shades of 
color easily discernible by the trained adult ; it would not be 
offended by disharmonies of tone-colors quite objectionable 
to the artist's eye. The simple fact is that this judgment, 
like every other judgment which undertakes to affirm objec- 
tive truth, postulates a common nature to which a final 
appeal may be made. And aesthetical judgment may thus 
be even more thoroughly objective than one affirming the 
sensuous agreeableness or disagreeableness of things. One 
man may not like olives, and another may like them; but 



176 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

what of that ? It is mere matter of happen-so of taste ; and 
they should not quarrel over it. If, however, you judge that 
incorrect tone to be correct, I judge you to be wanting in 
something that belongs to every rightly formed and well- 
developed consciousness. You are for the present quite 
shut out from one kind of truth; and this is because you 
cannot feel the difference between the true and the false in 
respect of this particular standard of judgment. 

Now ifc belongs to the branch of philosophy called aesthetics 
to investigate the origin and character, and to defend the 
validity of judgments respecting the beautiful in nature and 
in art. But whatever views one espouses in this branch of 
philosophy, they do not affect the truth of the epistemologi- 
cal principle for which we are now contending. This truth 
is the immediate dependence of the judgment affirming an 
act of cognition upon the feeling, for its rule. As has 
already been said, the cognitive judgment is affirmative of 
objective validity for that which has just been experienced 
in the succession of feelings. The judgment says not, "I 
know that I feel;" or, "I feel that you ought to feel with 
me. " The judgment says, " I know that it is so. " But if 
we ask for the cause rather than the grounds of the judg- 
ment, we find them to be : I felt it to be so. The feeling 
was not separated from the act of cognition; it constituted 
the important and regulating part of the cognition. The 
" stuff " of the judgment was a certain succession of qualita- 
tively determined and obscurely localized sensations of 
sound; its spirit and life, its affirmative or negative char- 
acter as agreeing or disagreeing with a certain ideal stand- 
ard, consisted in a definite quality and direction of the 
affective consciousness. 

So simple an example has been dwelt upon with what 
may seem too insistent minuteness, because it may be con- 
sidered as typical of the primary human cesthetical con- 
sciousness in general. And to say " aesthetical consciousness " 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 177 

is to cover a much larger and more important part of the 
actual life of the mind than is ordinarily supposed. How 
the higher aesthetical and ethical feelings enter into and 
regulate all our cognitive processes will be made the subject 
of inquiry in a separate chapter. But there is much of the 
daily intercourse of men, with its system of practical cogni- 
tions and its recognition of what are called "the proprieties " 
of life, that is really, though half-consciously, regulated by 
quasi-dssthetical feelings. Indeed, these feelings so blend 
with, or pass over into the ethical and the logical that it 
becomes quite impossible to consider the two classes of 
affective factors apart. The doctrine of " tact " is a neglected 
but much needed portion of psychology. It is chiefly by 
what is called tact, as all are agreed, that certain persons 
know what things are and how to handle them, — all by a 
leap, and without any obvious exercise of the faculty of 
thought and reasoning, as it were. He who can find the 
explanation of the boy Mozart, playing the grand organ on 
the first time of his encounter with it, by any theory as to a 
previous inheritance or development of the merely intel- 
lectual faculties, must be easily satisfied with his psycho- 
logical analyses. To employ such words as " genius " for 
the human artist, and " instinct " for the animal artist — for 
the beetle, or the spider, or the bee — is only to cover up 
ignorance instead of expressing knowledge. Nor can the 
astute observer sympathize with Hartmann, who, in his 
theory of the Unconscious, brings together innumerable facts 
of different orders as though the mere mention of a great 
number of cases proved his view of the real explanation 
of any case. But in our own case, as men, we know by 
self-consciousness that many of our most assured and 
valuable cognitions respecting the nature of things and of 
other selves are given chiefly in terms of feeling. Not 
always, indeed, but far too frequently to make it safe for 
us to despise this means of cognition, the felt truth turns 

12 



178 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

out, as tested by subsequent experience, to be the truth 
indeed. 

In smaller degree, and in somewhat but not in essentially 
different manner, does ethical feeling enter into all human 
judgments on matters of the morally right and the morally 
wrong in conduct. Reasons for the important differences 
between assthetical and ethical judgments are historical 
rather than due to the inherent nature of the faculty of cog- 
nition; and they are chiefly the two following. In the evo- 
lution of morals the more generally accepted principles of 
judgment have been embodied in the forms of written and 
unwritten law, of hereditary customs, institutions, and, 
indeed, of the total environment of the individual man. 
Matters of aesthetical judgment are much more fluid than 
are matters of ethical judgment. The total constitution of 
society forms rules, or dictates, to which cognition must 
conform to a greater extent in conduct than in art. But 
this difference is connected with another; and out of the 
latter difference the former largely has its origin and sources 
of growth. The consequences of wrong judgment, or of imper- 
fect knowledge, in respect of our moral action are much more 
manifest and impressive than in respect of what is merely 
aesthetically correct or incorrect. Hence it is much easier 
to bring one's knowledge of the ethically right or wrong into 
conscious connection with recognized grounds upon which it 
may be left to repose, to argue about it, and to teach reasons 
for it to others, than to deal in similar fashion with one's 
knowledge of the beautiful or the ugly. A high degree of 
Kennen in conduct is "wisdom;" but in art it is "genius" 
or "talent." A great deficiency of knowledge in matters of 
conduct seems monstrous and inhuman; but a correspond- 
ingly great deficiency of knowledge in sesthetical matters 
makes the rude man or the boor. 

These differences, however, do not affect the general 
principle that judgments in matters of conduct rest more 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 179 

upon a basis of feeling than upon a basis of thinking; and 
this in such a way that the judgments themselves affirm 
the mere fact of feeling rather than the intellectual ground 
of the feeling. In the conduct of the multitude, of young 
children, and in much of the conduct of all classes of 
persons, the whole character and content of the stream of 
consciousness may as well be expressed by saying, " I feel 
I ought" (or ought not) as by saying: "I knoiv that it is 
right" (or wrong). A study of the moral nature and de- 
velopment of man, of the human mental life as fitted for 
conduct, shows that it is only the feelings of " oughtness " 
and of " approbation " which are the unique and primal 
ethical factors. On the basis of these feelings, which spring 
from the very depths of the soul, as they are called out and 
connected by the environment with certain modes of motor 
activity, the current system of ethical judgments is framed. 
The placing of these judgments by the individual on recog- 
nized grounds, whether they are laid in the anticipated con- 
sequences of the conduct, or in some conception of a law or 
of an ideal personality, is a secondary and later affair. And 
not infrequently the original forms of feeling linger strong 
in the community, or die hard only after antagonistic 
secondary judgments have for some time been formally 
accepted as the " rational " code. Then occurs that conflict, 
so interesting to psychology and epistemology, which is due 
to the fact that moral feeling judges the same thing wrong 
which reasoning on grounds judges to be right ; or vice versa. 
One man's "bad conscience " may then appear in the form of 
perverse feeling, and another's in the form of insufficient 
reasoning. Then, not only do the " men of feeling " and the 
" men of cool judgment " accuse each other of bad character 
and bad conduct ; but even in the same man's breast, feeling 
and reason fight it out to get possession of the judgment, 
which, in this case, however, never seems quite to reach a 
satisfactory determination. For men need to feel satisfied. 



180 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

as well as to reason satisfactorily, in order most assuredly to 
affirm I know — the truth or falsehood of a moral judgment. 
This curious conflict between feeling and intellect to get 
control of judgment will be observed in other connections. 
It is frequent and forceful in cognitions of the ethical 
class. 

Objections may be urged, however, against the use of the 
word "knowledge" as applicable to matters sesthetical and 
ethical. Properly and quite strictly speaking, ought one 
not to say that these are matters of opinion rather than of 
knowledge ? To this inquiry the full and satisfactory answer 
requires an examination of the grounds of certitude, of the 
means of knowing truth from error, and of the propriety of 
speaking of degrees in cognition. Postponing the discus- 
sion of these subjects, we turn our attention to another class 
of feelings against which the same objection cannot be raised. 
Reference now is made to the so-called " logical " feelings. 
Thorough psychological analysis shows that there is not a 
single process of thought which does not have its affective 
as well as its intellective aspect. Without the former 
no thought-process would bring us to the truth. I think, 
and, finally, I know: examined in one aspect, this simply 
means that a certain series of ideas and judgments, more or 
less supported (it is probable) by a frame-work of language, 
determines itself in my stream of consciousness. While the 
series is passing, or on reviewing it by repeating it more 
carefully, I discern other relations of consistency or incon- 
sistency between the ideas and judgments; and at the end of 
the series, I pass judgment in such final form as to say, 
"I know." Examined in another aspect, this same expe- 
rience means that I am doing something, am voluntarily and 
definitively directing the stream of my own consciousness 
toward a desired end. But examined in yet another aspect, 
the same series of conscious states means that I am feeling 
myself as being modified by the relations toward one another 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 181 

of my own ideas and judgments. I am myself affected by 
that which I actively effect in respect of the connection, 
and the character of the flow into each other, of my train 
of conscious states. The feeling of the intellectual pro- 
cesses, whether in sense-perception or in self-consciousness, 
or in the remoter reasonings about things and selves, is 
a constant accompaniment of all these processes. It is not 
merely an accompaniment ; it is also a regulative factor in 
the same processes. It is not a simple, dumb companion 
in the journey from start to finish ; but from start to finish, 
this "feeling of" the thought-movement is also a guide 
to the movement of thought. 

Consider any of the fundamental exercises of thinking 
faculty, — for example, such activity of discriminating con- 
sciousness as is necessary for the accurate perception of 
anything. Here thinking, as terminating in cognition, is 
suffused with, and directed by, affective factors that accom- 
pany it all the way through. The feeling of pleased familiar- 
ity, which is the affective factor in all recognition, is a part 
of the intellectual process of assimilation; the feeling of 
perplexity, in which the mind hangs while "making up" 
itself, over the particular object's likeness or unlikeness to 
some class of objects previously cognized, is a part of the 
intellectual process of criticism; the feeling of shock and 
slight repugnance, in all appreciation of the unlike or of 
the contrary, is the emotional element in the intellectual 
process of differentiation. In all these and similar cases of 
intellectual activity the feelings are important and influen- 
tial guides to the final judgment. Such figurative assertions 
as follow are, then, true to the facts of consciousness : The 
feeling of recognition shows the mind what it shall judge to 
be similar or the same; the feeling of uncertainty compels 
the mind to the suspension of judgment; the feeling of dif- 
ference induces the mind to distinguish and to refuse to 
judge, under a common term. In the first case feeling is 



182 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

satisfied only if we judge, " It is this ; " in the second case, 
only if we judge, " I do not know what it is ; " but in the 
third case, only if we judge, "It is not that." It is under 
the potent influence of these affective reguloe that the forma- 
tion and growth of a system of cognitions takes place. 
Things are bound together by ties of common feeling, or 
held apart by feelings of repugnance. But about some 
things we should not feel right, whether we put them into 
the class A or into the class non-A. In such cases it is vain 
to assure the wise man that, according to invincible logical 
principle, everything must belong with either A or non-A. 
He knows of the logical principle ; but what he does not 
know is, to which of these two classes this particular X 
belongs. The grounds of his refusal to judge he can also 
state, at least with a partial satisfaction. But what is the 
meaning of the other side of every declaration of doubt ? 
Is it not this, that one feels one's self to be "not satisfied" 
with one's grounds of judgment? If one could only "feel 
sure " of them, then, etc. What, finally, are satisfaction 
per se and non-satisfaction per se, but forms of affective 
consciousness ? To suppose that man's intellectual activity 
could free itself from the feelings which belong to the pro- 
cesses of mental assimilation, differentiation, and criticism, 
and yet retain its logical effectiveness is almost as foolish 
as to suppose that the bones and sinews of the bird could 
fly if there were no stirring or guiding of motive interior to 
the mechanism. 

This doctrine of a regulative influence for the affective 
elements of cognition applies to sense-perception, to self- 
consciousness, and also to extended processes of reasoning. 
Our perception of anything by sight, by touch, and by any 
or by all of the senses, is never an affair merely of being 
passively impressed with the image of an external object; 
nor is it an activity of mere thinking and of the projection 
of our thoughts into a thought-produced space. That when 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 183 

I see the tree over yonder, the Ego is not merely taking the 
place of the sensitive plate in a kind of nervous camera, no 
longer needs statement for the student of scientific psy- 
chology. But neither can my perception of the existence or 
character of the object be described and explained on the 
theory of its being a mere object of my thought. How the 
reality of my object for me (that it is) depends on a feeling 
in me, may well be made a separate task for analysis and 
critical discussion. Here Schopenhauer's sharp criticism 
of Kant for dismissing the whole affair with the sentence, 
"Objects are given to us through our sensibility," is not 
without justification. But, furthermore, precisely what the 
object of perception is, can never be considered as a question 
either for mere sensation or for pure thinking to decide. 
The resultant of the active discrimination, however promptly 
rendered, depends also on the regulative function of the 
logical feelings. 

In this connection we note again how the feeling-full and 
active character of the cognitive processes makes them to be 
truly cognitive, by preventing them from being regarded as 
purely subjective processes, whether of sensation, ideation, 
or thought, and by enforcing and making vital, as it were, 
their trans-subjective implications. To speak of the object 
of perception, Kantian fashion, as a "thought-object" is to 
hypostasize one abstract aspect of consciousness. Purely 
thinking consciousness is itself an abstraction ; there is no 
such subjective reality anywhere to be found. And to speak 
of the existence or being of any actual concrete object of per- 
ception as merely object of consciousness, or merely thought- 
object, is to be false to fact. "For being is in no wise a 
constituent of an idea; it is experienced, felt, lived, not 
ideated or thought. " 1 

In all such knowledge as is reached through the mediation 
of trains of associated ideas, or of more carefully selected 

1 Riehl, Der Philosophische Kriticismus, II., ii., pp. 142 f. 



184 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND AVILLING 

judgments arranged in series that correspond to the laws of 
logical thinking, our feeling of these processes is an impor- 
tant factor in the processes themselves. If those funda- 
mental principles of all reasoning, — the so-called principles 
of Identity and of Sufficient Reason — without which we 
cannot even conceive of reasoning at all, and in conscious 
violation of which no processes of reasoning, however false 
or inconclusive, can be conducted, are brought to the last test 
of their value, in what does this test consist ? Must not this 
question be answered by saying : " In the invincible character 
of the feeling with which all men affirm them, and the 
unconquerable repugnance with which any proposal to abro- 
gate them is universally met " ? For argument has here 
arrived at a stage where reasoning can decide nothing. 
Reasoning enters into the arena only when the particular 
application of these principles of all reasoning is the matter 
of contest. I can perhaps throw some clear, cold light upon 
the disputed question of the identity of a particular A and 
a particular B. I can illuminate my own mind and the 
minds of others, perhaps, as to whether the accepted judg- 
ment " A is B " warrants the further judgment, " A is also 
<?." But if that principle which books of logic sometimes 
symbolize by writing, " All A is A " be called in question ; 
or that other principle on the basis of which it is argued 
that "If all A is B and is A, then C is also B," — why, 
then what can reasoning do about it ? For the question now 
is whether consistency and logic and reason themselves 
shall be the court of appeal on the part of all would-be 
reasoners. You and I have nothing but our feelings — both 
of the potency and beauty of our position of trust, and of the 
impotency and ugliness of the position of absurd distrust — 
to which we can appeal. Indeed, it is the loss of sensitive- 
ness to these feelings which chiefly characterizes an utter 
lapse from the level of rational human nature. He who 
cannot feel these so-called logical principles as true and of 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 185 

inestimable value is a lost man. His soul has no reason. 
It may be a principle of psychic life, of some sort of mock 
intelligence ; but it has no longer the semblance of a rational 
human being. Its affective core is gone. 

The regulative influences and values of the feelings which 
accompany all processes of ratiocination might be illustrated 
in almost endless detail. And these illustrations might be 
drawn from all our work-a-day experiences. But for this 
very reason little illustration is needed. It will be helpful, 
however, to notice how the trains of associated ideas along 
the levels where comparatively little clear-thoughted judg- 
ment occurs are guided by their affective accompaniments. 
Sometimes this guidance brings the mind out upon solid 
grounds of verity ; sometimes it leads the mind into quag- 
mires and spongy places of doubt and error. Who has not 
felt, on returning home from market, shop, or study, as 
though his memory had lapsed or gone wrong on some par- 
ticular point ; but, on thinking it over, has judged this affec- 
tive consciousness to be misguiding, — only, perhaps, to find 
subsequently that feeling was the truer indication of the 
fact ? In listening to the discourse of others, upon failure 
to catch for thought the exact points and clear-cut thread of 
the argument, how potent are the feelings of satisfaction or 
dissatisfaction that arise from the most obscure depths of 
the soul, to determine our mental attitudes toward the various 
judgments which mark the steps of the argument ? 

Nor are such experiences to be confined to the sphere of 
mere opinion or belief, where what is called "prejudice" 
exercises its most potent influence. How very restricted is 
the sphere within which absolute certainty can be attained, 
both as to the " that " and the " what " of the object of cog- 
nition, will appear later on. Doubtless all manner of feel- 
ings of interest or of indifference influence men to erroneous 
opinions and to false beliefs; or even to substitute judg- 
ments formed under such influences for assured knowledge. 



186 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

But neither of these considerations changes the nature or 
lowers the value of the truth we are enforcing. The feel- 
ings which belong by virtue of the mind's constitution to 
its logical processes are themselves influential factors in deter- 
mining the course and the conclusion of those processes. 
One would otherwise no more know how to hit the mark of 
truth, or when indeed he had hit this mark, than how to 
manage his foil in fencing without a guiding influence from 
the feelings of motion. Herein, also, is contained a wide 
sphere of individual differentiation. Thus we sometimes 
hear men arguing whether a certain argument is itself good, 
with a comparative indifference as to the truth of the con- 
clusions reached by the argument. And one will say, "The 
reasoning seemed to me excellent, but the conclusion T know 
to be nonsense ; " but another will say, " To me, on the con- 
trary, the conclusions seemed true, but the argument a weak 
one." On examination it will turn out, probably, that in the 
former case, the flow of satisfied feeling went smoothly on 
until the rude shock of the concluding judgment was felt. 
But the other listener reached a good piece of smooth-feeling 
road at the end of a journey in a cart without springs over a 
rough causeway. Now both hearers feel bound, by the 
sacred obligation which the consciousness of rationality 
imposes on every man, to pass again in review the experi- 
ences of their common journey. The first will rest satisfied 
only when he has torn up again the road he travelled so as 
actually to know where and why he should turn off by a path 
to escape the hateful termination. But the other will strive 
to build for himself a better piece of highway leading to the 
same terminal. Only thus will both feel comfortable all the 
way from the point of starting to their destination; and this 
is because both are constantly being so profoundly influenced 
by the regulating force of the feelings which are the affective 
functions of the logical processes. 

There are some forms of affective consciousness in all 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 187 

knowledge, however, which are yet more mysterious, and 
which lie darker and deeper in the depths of the soul. These 
we have called " integrating " feelings, because they seem in 
some sort constitutive of the very integrity of the cognitive 
act. But so dark and mysterious are they that it is difficult 
to describe or even to name them. Let no one suppose, 
however, that, on this account, they may safely be overlooked 
or denied. For they resent such treatment by rising to a 
fine pitch of emotional excitement. And yet no other feel- 
ings are ordinarily so unobtrusive, but without being any 
the less permanent. Indeed, these integrating feelings color 
every act of cognition, and really make it to be cognition as 
distinguished from any form of psychosis which is not 
completely that. 

Here consider for a moment the emotional condition into 
which, as a matter of fact, the " plain man " is thrown when 
you bring before him the sceptical question as to his own 
existence, or as to the existence of the external objects of 
his cognition, the familiar things of his work-a-day life. Let 
one lay aside, as far as possible, the psychologist's fallacies 
and the scholastic philosophical dogmas. Let one try, for 
the time being, to have the same contempt for psychology 
and metaphysics which the plain man feels. But let it be a 
genuinely "plain man" who is questioned, and not a learned 
ignoramus who has set up a smattering of borrowed and 
misunderstood psychology or a pretence of sceptical and 
agnostic philosophy. How now will such a mind face the 
questions : "Do you, then, really exist?" and, " Is the stone 
you are hammering with that hammer something real ? " 
If the attitude of the ordinary consciousness be assumed and 
held toward the question (not toward the questioner), it will 
by no means be found describable by affirming simply : I 
believe that I am ; or I imagine that I am ; or I have an idea 
that I am ; or I think that 1 am. One can adequately ex- 
press the answer only by affirming, I know that I am ; and 



188 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

by affirming it with emphasis. Knowledge, then, subjectively 
considered, is something more than mere opinion, mere belief, 
mere idea, or mere thinking. It will, however, be allowable 
to express the sum total of this cognitive consciousness by 
saying, I' feel that I am, — if only some qualifying phrase 
be added : I feel sure, very sure, that I am. But this is to 
say that strong and unreasoning " conviction " characterizes 
the act of self-cognition in the case of the naive and unre- 
flecting consciousness. 

It will further be found that the strength of this conviction 
is by no means wholly dependent upon, or chiefly governed by, 
the fulness of clear-thoughted conception of Self which the 
subject of the conviction enjoys. All that self-feeling, which 
is wrapped up, as it were, in the conception of Self, undoubt- 
edly develops in some manner of relation to those processes of 
thinking which result in forming the same conception. The 
self-feeling of the child is, perhaps, less intense and compre- 
hensive before it has become acquainted with itself through 
activities of thinking. But, however self-feeling may be 
implicated in this element of conviction as to the reality of 
the Self, the conviction itself does not result from any argu- 
ment. Its intensity can neither be increased nor diminished 
by argument. In so-called " diseases of personality," or 
alleged cases of double or triple consciousness, and of strata 
of selves lying one below another, or of Egos bearing num- 
bers one, two, or more, that have been " drawn off " and 
consolidated in centres of selfhood, it is chiefly disturbances 
of feeling which initiate the entire aberration of mind. So, 
too, in the self-assertion of the normal mind, it is this " feel- 
ing sure," this affective and convictive function, which 
chiefly seems to authenticate the reality of the Self. We 
have just called it " unreasoning." And unreasoning it cer- 
tainly is, not because it is irrational or unworthy of a living, 
active reason, but because it does not seem to rely, for its 
origin or for its authentication, upon ratiocination. For if 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 189 

this " plain man " be asked how he knows, or why he feels so 
sure of, his own real existence, he can only repeat that it is 
so : he knows — and that, with him, is the end of the whole 
matter. His knowing is chiefly a feeling-sure. 

Put as an argument for the existence in reality of the Self, 
all this becomes reasoning in a circle ; and so short is the 
circle that we can no sooner start out to " round " its circum- 
ference than we find ourselves back at the point of starting. 
For, in fact, it is not a circulus in arguendo at all ; the case 
is not like the effort to get around, behind, or beyond the act 
of knowledge in order to know what knowledge is. Here is 
simply the solid matter-of-fact conviction, — a feeling-sure of 
my own reality which admits of no examination, because it 
needs none. 

And upon this level of indubitable conviction no one will 
ever be superior to the witness of the " plain man's " con- 
sciousness. Be as subtle in analysis, as curious in psy- 
chological criticism, as sceptical in inquiry, as keen in 
ratiocinative powers as you may, and you have in no respect 
here any advantage over the man who knows and heeds 
nothing of your psychology or your metaphysics. That same 
intense, indubitable conviction within you, too, bars the way 
at this point to any further critical inquiry. " I know I am," 
or " I feel perfectly sure of my own existence," as guaranty 
of the here-and-now being of what I call Self, is the last word 
on the matter. Nothing profounder or more ultimate can 
ever be discovered along this line of investigation. For along 
this line of inquiry we have reached, not a " limiting concep- 
tion" of a negative character, but an actual and ultimate 
feeling-full positing, which, if we try to dissolve it into its 
elements, does not lessen its size or soften its quality. And 
in the whole deep sea of human consciousness we shall never 
find anything other or more, of the same kind, than this. 
We may drag the surface of that sea with the fine-meshed 
nets of modern psychology, and sink into its bottom the 



190 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

anchor of religious faith, and send down to its lowest depths 
the skilful divers of metaphysics and epistemology ; but noth- 
ing like this, that is not this same thing in other guise, will 
anywhere be found. But why should one wish forever to 
authenticate the surest of convictions with other convictions ? 

Undoubtedly, the " plain man " will affirm his knowledge 
as a " feeling-sure " with regard also to the object of his 
cognition through the senses. Undoubtedly, too, the applica- 
tion of the affective function of consciousness in all our knowl- 
edge of things must be regarded as furnishing its own guar= 
antee. This is enough to notice at the present time. It does not 
follow that the embrace of the conviction of reality must have 
the same extent in both of its two main directions. That the 
object-thing really is, and that it is not to be identified with 
the being which is its cognizing subject, are certainly held up 
in every mind as propositions supported by the conviction 
that makes itself a necessary part of every act of knowledge. 
The fuller circuits over which reach, respectively, the convic- 
tion of the reality of Self and the conviction of the reality of 
Things, are to be discovered and described only as the result 
of further critical inquiry. 

That the Will is an essential part of mental functioning 
in every act of knowledge has already been made sufficiently 
clear. Of feelings there are diverse kinds, and the ideas and 
thoughts of the mind are not easily to be numbered. But 
willing is of essentially one kind, although reaching its 
highest complex development in the phenomenon of moral 
choice. In the previous chapters it has been seen that the 
thinking and judging which are necessary to cognition, and 
therefore the act of cognition itself, are active — that is, a 
forthputting of the Self considered as Will. It remains in 
the present connection only to note how, in that melange of 
experiences which comes through the voluntary handling of 
the bodily organism, the knowledge of Self and of Things 
gets progressively defined. 



KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 191 

It is not designed to discuss the much debated question as 
to the origin and nature of the feeling of effort ; or the other 
even more hotly contested question, whether there exist in 
consciousness any feelings of activity as actual part of its 
total content. 1 The progress of physiological investigation 
seems rather to show that the nervous currents going out 
from the motor elements of the brain do modify consciousness. 
Psychological analysis makes very clear, it seems to us, that 
consciousness of activity is an unceasing element, or aspect, 
of all consciousness ; in other words, we never cease to will 
and to know that we are willing. 

Now, undoubtedly, it is as having muscular and tactual 
contact with things — moving them or trying with might and 
main to move them, and being pushed about and steadily 
resisted by them — that the knowledge of things is made 
most vivid and most clear. If I were not a self-conscious 
will, knowing myself as also a Thing that acts and suffers 
among other things, there would be no world of other things 
for me. I could never know that the world of real things is, 
and what it is, by a motionless, inert life of pure imagination 
and pure thought. The rather do I enter into a red-blooded 
strife with things, and by trying to master them and impress 
my will upon them, learn to know them as that-which-will- 
not always as I will. It is this relation of wills, with its ac- 
companiment of motor consciousness as an external percep- 
tion of changes in place, and a more internal sense of the 
conditions and changes of the motor apparatus, which chiefly 
effects the differentiation of the sum total of experience into 
Knowledge of Self and Knowledge of Things. Unless cogni- 
tion were always a matter of will, such differentiation could 
not take place at all. Unless changes of will were accom- 
panied, preceded, and followed by changes in the sensation- 
content of consciousness, and also in its affective character, 

1 On these questions, see "Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory," chap- 
ters xi., xxii., xxvi. ; and " Philosophy of Mind," chapters iii., iv., vii., viii. 



192 KNOWLEDGE AS FEELING AND WILLING 

cognition could not accomplish this differentiation in the 
manner in which it actually does bring it about. Thus the 
extension of the doctrine of the nature of knowledge, as thus 
far set forth, leads to the further study of the division of all 
the objects of knowledge, into Things and Self. 



CHAPTER VII 

KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND KNOWLEDGE OF SELF* 

AMONG the various distinctions which it seems necessary 
to recognize in order to describe and understand the 
mental phenomenon called cognition, the most important and 
fundamental is that between subject and object. Indeed, 
this distinction seems in some sort to be involved in the 
very act of cognition. To know, one must distinguish and 
make his own some object ; for the " I know " which de- 
scribes the act of cognition is actually a knowledge of some- 
thing or other, — an activity determined with reference to 
somewhat that is known. Yet this act is also necessarily 
regarded as some one's act, or, at least, as some one's ex- 
perience by way of knowledge, so to speak ; since the word 
" I," which stands as the subject of the sentence declarative 
of the experience, is as essential to the full meaning of the 
sentence as is the additional phrase defining the terminal 
upon which the act alights in the form of a judgment. 

Another distinction which is popularly made to apply to 
different cognitive acts, so as to sort them into two distinct 
kinds, is connected with the distinction of subject and object. 
This other distinction is thought of as applying to the objects 
of knowledge themselves ; it divides them into classes which 
must by no means be confused with one another, if the sub- 
ject would make good in reality its claim to have a genuine 
cognition. On the basis of this latter distinction, then, epis- 

1 For a treatment of the same topic from the point of view of descriptive 
psychology, see chapter xxii. by the same title, in the author's " Psychology," etc. 

13 



194 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

temology has to consider the nature, grounds, certitude, and 
more ultimate meaning of the Knowledge of Things and the 
Knowledge of Self. It would appear that account must be 
taken of the distinction between subject and object, if any 
theory of knowledge is to be established. But it would also 
appear that account must be taken of that distinction between 
objects upon the basis of which a division of cognitive pro- 
cesses into kinds is frequently set up. Indeed the critical 
examination which all epistemological theory presupposes will 
show that the former distinction is essential to knowledge 
as such ; but the latter distinction is the basis of that system 
of cognitions which not only sets the Self into relations with 
a known world of things, but also sets these things into 
known relations with each other so as to form a " world " 
out of them all. The more ultimate bearings of both these 
distinctions it belongs to metaphysics rather than to epis- 
temology to subject to critical treatment. 

Grammar, and for the most part also logic, discusses the 
distinction of subject and object as a purely formal affair. 
According to the rules with which the grammarian is busied, 
any perception or conception can be substituted for the S 
which indicates the subject, and as well for the P which 
stands in the place of the predicate and thus objectively deter- 
mines the subject by virtue of some connection of a copula, — 
if only the rules of correct form be observed. For grammar 
looks only after violations of the rules for gender, number, 
and case, or for the positions in which the words of the 
sentence are arranged according to good usage in the par- 
ticular language employed, etc. As it becomes more thor- 
oughly psychological, grammar abstracts from considerations 
peculiar to particular languages, and considers the laws of 
the expression of human thinking, feeling, willing, in any 
form of articulate speech. But as to the origin, nature, and 
validity of the distinction affirmed between S and P, as rep- 
resentative of an implied differentiation and unification in 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 195 

reality, it is not interested to inquire. Nor is the distinction 
which it authorizes between the subject and the predicate the 
exact equivalent of that distinction between subject and object 
which all acts of cognition imply. For let the sentence under 
examination be made an affirmation of some act of cognition, 
and the grammatical theory of the sentence is not changed. 
" I know assuredly that the snow is white " is not essentially 
different, for grammatical structure, from " I imagine that, 
in Utopia, the snow is a delicate grass-green ; " or " I re- 
member to have heard with incredulity that red snow has 
sometimes fallen." Here, says the grammarian, are three 
words, — " know," " imagine," and " remember," — all having 
the same subject " I," all in the present indicative, and all 
having for the object of their active mood a dependent sen- 
tence or clause. For the theory of knowledge, however, as 
concerned with the nature and validity of the relations ex- 
pressed by these different words between the subject and the 
object, and more especially with the reality of both subject 
and object as existent in these relations, the difference be- 
tween such grammatically similar sentences is quite unique. 

Nor does so-called formal logic take to heart the distinc- 
tion between subject and object as it becomes the searcher 
after a true theory of knowledge to do. This science of 
logic, indeed, will tell you something more important and 
more nearly fundamental, from the epistemological points 
of view, than is attempted by the grammarian. Hence, 
while the grammarian only occasionally makes an appeal to 
psychology or philosophy to discover or to justify his opinions, 
the logician almost constantly and quite inevitably moves 
along the border-lines between his special inquiry and that 
of epistemology. Indeed, logical praxis tells us how to make 
such combinations of S and P as shall lead to expansion of 
our knowledge of S and P, and to the development of truth 
regarding them. Yet here, even, — somewhat curiously, as 
it seems to us, — the expansion of knowledge, the develop- 



196 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

ment of truth, secured and guaranteed by conformity to the 
laws of logic, all depends upon the belief that the original 
distinction, by way of differentiation, relation, and unification, 
of S and P has been somehow, otherwise than oy logic, se- 
cured and guaranteed. 

When, however, this distinction of subject and object is 
taken to psychology, as a purely descriptive and explanatory 
science, it receives a yet more unsatisfactory and tantalizing 
treatment. For, first of all, in explanation of the distinction 
itself, as the fact of it appears to be most plainly set into 
reality by every act of cognition, we are introduced to a series 
of shallow sophisms and abstractions which end by doing 
away with the reality of this distinction. It is pointed out 
that, of course, the only way in which the subject could ever 
know itself, is to make itself its own object. But in doing this 
it parts with the privilege of knowing itself as subject ; for 
the self which is known is, by virtue of its being known, an 
object of its own knowledge. How now shall one find one's 
self so as to know that one is, and how one is, since in the 
very process of cognition, attention must be centrifugally 
directed, as it were ? Yet again, what is the nature of this 
object-self ? When truly answered, the question leads us, we 
are told, to recognize the fact that somehow a special aggre- 
gate of sensations, with a peculiarly vivid and warm color- 
tone of feeling, which may be localized in the throat or 
elsewhere, gets to be dominant in the field of consciousness. 
Thus the conclusion of scientific psychology, without pre- 
judice from epistemology or the metaphysical doctrine of a 
soul, resolves the distinction between subject and object into 
a distinction between differently colored and aggregated sen- 
sation-contents of consciousness, — objectively determined, it 
might as well at once be added, by influences over which the 
subject has no control. 

But if the subject has disappeared from the actuality of 
this transaction called knowledge, in which the distinction 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 197 

of subject and object is popularly supposed somehow to be 
involved, what becomes of the distinction itself ? It is, of 
course, resolved into a mere distinction, content-wise (and, 
perhaps, merely in the matter of sensation-contents) between 
different kinds of conscious states, — objectively determined. 
Such psychological analysis no more finds a real soul, an 
actually existent subject of states standing in relation of 
cognition to trans-subjectively existent object-things, than 
the dissection of the anatomist finds such a soul on break- 
ing apart, post-mortem, the elements of the brain. Let it 
not be forgotten, however, that in consistency the same 
psychological procedure must be applied to the object of 
knowledge when that object happens to be some Thing, in- 
stead of appearing as my Self. And when this has been done, 
when our psychology has been beautifully and thoroughly 
consistent with its analysis of psychoses after the approved 
modern pattern, then there is left neither party to the now 
obsolete distinction. Subject is resolved into a passing phase 
of object, and object, even when object-thing, is a passing 
phase of subject ; the distinction has lost its validity for 
reality ; the act of knowledge is accounted for by denying 
that it actually is what all men, outside of the ranks of a 
certain school of psychologists, understand an act of knowl- 
edge to be. 

It appears, then, that the philosophical doctrine of knowl- 
edge requires something more than either the grammatical, 
or the logical, or the pseudo-psychological account of these 
distinctions, if it would save itself from the gulf of complete 
agnosticism. This need begins to be satisfied when we recog- 
nize the unsatisfactory character of every psychological ac- 
count of knowledge which gives us no other and deeper view 
of self-consciousness and of sense-perception than that which 
has just been arraigned. 

We are told on the authority of Herbart and others that 
self-consciousness as self-cognition cannot be admitted in 



198 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

fact, because the very conception of it involves an attempt 
at movement in a perpetual circle. It must be admitted 
that since we are not all at once self-conscious, whether 
consideration be had of the acquirement of the so-called 
faculty in the development of the mind or of the individual 
act of " coming-to " self-consciousness, the origins of this 
form of cognition are obscure. This is true of origins of all 
sorts, and generally. Whatever may be allowed for some faint 
trace of self -feeling, as inhering in every act or state of con- 
sciousness, our explanation of self-consciousness can only be 
analytical and developmental, as it were. The most funda- 
mental factors appear above the threshold of consciousness 
as arising out of the obscure, the totally dark background of 
the nature of the Self. No effort of memory or of imagina- 
tion can recall or represent them as they originally were. 
A complete descriptive science of the origins and grounds of 
self-consciousness is therefore forever hidden from our ken. 
On this account, however, we must not fall into the psycho- 
logical fallacy of substituting abstractions for real and living 
experiences, and then so manipulating these abstractions, 
and setting them into antinomic and irreconcilably contra- 
dictory relations with each other, as to deny the plain mean- 
ing of the experiences themselves. Self-consciousness is not 
an abstraction. The description of it may be, and often is, 
a mere abstract relating of abstractions. But, in actuality, 
self-consciousness is the experience of a being with itself. This 
experience is at times so rich and content-full, that when fully 
apprehended and faithfully described, it is seen to involve at- 
tending to and thinking about the self, feeling of self, — 
the affection of being alive as both suffering and doing, — 
and activity that is self-directing as well as self-cognizing. 1 

1 Compare the rather stilted but forceful language of Klein, Die Genesis 
der Kategorien, pp. 17 1: " Sein Sichfnden und Sichdenken ist ein Sichwissen, 
sowohl ah Realeinheit (Substanz), wie ah Ursache, weil ursachende Sache zugleich 
( Causalitat, causales Princip) ; mithin ein Sichfinden nicht bloss ah Trager des 
JScheins, sondern ah mitwiirker, und deshalbs ah Trager des Erscheinens." 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 199 

Whatever may be thought as to the chronological or psy- 
chological priority of the different acts and kinds of knowl- 
edge, there can be no doubt that self-consciousness is entitled 
to priority when viewed from the epistemological points of 
view. If any form of cognition is destined to be regarded as 
an envisagement of reality, and to claim the deepest and 
intensest manifestation of that conviction which we have 
seen to constitute an integrating factor of all cognitive acts, 
such form of cognition comes through self-consciousness. 
An immediateness of knowledge which surpasses that with 
which I know myself as here and now existent, cannot be 
gained by any sharpening or spurring of the mental faculties. 
Nor can any truer and surer envisagement of reality be made 
even an object of imagination. Indeed, all that I conceive 
of as " intuitive," as doing away with all barriers between 
knowing subject and reality known, is conceived of after the 
type of my experience with myself. How can angels, or even 
God, know anything more indubitably and transparently given, 
object to subject, in the unity of the embrace of cognition, 
than is my here-and-now existence to my here-and-now ex- 
istent-Self ? If there be a more immediate and indubitable 
form of envisagement possible, no human being can even get 
standing for a flight of imagination which shall discern that 
form. Let not epistemology continue to repeat the mistake 
of Kant in neglecting this truth. 

Introspection and observation of the actual course in de- 
velopment of mental life, helped out by sound reflective 
thinking, leads to a negative conclusion regarding the dis- 
tinction of subject and object in the earliest psychic processes. 
Active imaging and discriminating considered as function, 
on the one hand, and object considered as point of regard 
and as content discriminated, on the other hand (Vorstellen 
and Object), were not originally separate as facts in the 
one experience of the inchoate mental life. Much less 
were they extant as separate entities envisaged in the one 



200 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

stream of consciousness. To imagine them as, not merely 
separable, but also as actually separated " moments " or 
factors in the psychic flow, is to transpose conceptions re- 
sulting from our experience with our own growth of knowl- 
edge, back into those conditions when as yet knowledge was 
not begun. To imagine subject and object pre-existent as 
entities is to introduce, in another way, the conflict of 
abstractions, — the abstract antinomies which result in de- 
stroying the very being of cognition. 

How now did that distinction into subject and object arise, 
which in its most immediate and supreme form of application 
belongs to all the knowledge of self-consciousness ? This 
question can be partially answered only by a careful atten- 
tion to the two main aspects of all conscious states. Every 
state of consciousness may — indeed, must be regarded as both 
passive and active. As a state, it is determined by being 
subjected to influences passively received ; but it is also self- 
determining by virtue of the fact that it, as a conscious ener- 
gizing, takes part in shaping these same influences. It is on 
the basis of this double nature, which belongs to all our 
psychic life and which presents every portion of that life as, 
of necessity, both passive and active, that the distinction of 
subject and object as applied to the Self reposes. But the 
realization of this very distinction demands an activity of the 
mind itself. We do not account for what actually takes place 
by speaking as though subject and object distinguished them- 
selves, after the fashion of atoms of oxygen and atoms of 
hydrogen when a compound of the two is broken up. Each 
kind of atom then goes to its own place ; each aggregates 
itself, by favor of what we call its " affinity," to the group to 
which it belongs. But passive atoms of the stream of con- 
sciousness do not, of themselves, flow together into an object- 
self, and active atoms into a subject-self, according to laws of 
psychic affinity. The rather is it the work of the consciously 
active mind, by a progressive mastery of its own being, to dis- 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 201 

criminate, to assimilate, and to generalize the factors, both 
active and passive, of its one psychic life. At whatever for- 
gotten and to imagination irrecoverable time, the work of 
discriminating consciousness became complete enough to in- 
troduce this distinction for the momentary diremption of the 
stream of consciousness, then an act of self-consciousness took 
place. Then I became aware of myself as doing or suffering 
in some definitively segregated state. The doing, regarded as 
conscious discriminating, as thinking activity, as the becom- 
ing aware = I myself as knowing. The doing, or suffer- 
ing, regarded as that of which I become aware = the Self, 
known. 1 

The foregoing description of an act of self-consciousness 
is also, in all important features, a description of an act of 
cognition. It may be more or less of the so-called immedi- 
ate order, and so comparable to perception of things by the 
senses, or it may be framed so as to make conceptual and 
thinking processes more prominent ; but in either event it is 
an act of cognition. We should expect, then, to find that it 
is pervaded with feeling of a peculiar and appropriate kind ; 
and that it is supported by that conviction as to the reality of 
its object, and that grasp of will upon reality, which have been 
seen to characterize all the cognitive processes. What we are 
entitled to expect, that we actually find. Indeed, this cog- 
nition of the reality of Self, as given in self-consciousness, 
has already (see pp. 170 f.), on account of its feeling-full and 
firm grasp, been made the typical example of all cognition. 

From the epistemological point of view, then, the distinc- 
tion of subject and object, not as merely formal or phenome- 
nal, but, on the one hand, as entering into the essential 
nature of knowledge as a subjective process, and on the other 



1 The stages in the development of self-knowledge, as determined by the num- 
ber and character of the bodily or other elements entering into the object-self, or 
otherwise determined do not concern us here. But see " Psychology, Descriptive 
and Explanatory," pp. 519 f., and " Philosophy of Mind," pp. 81 f., 245 f. 



202 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

hand, as teaching the very nature of the reality of the object 
of knowledge, is most fundamental in character. Its " intui- 
tion " is of the most immediate and supremely self-confident 
order; it is most unmistakable and inextinguishable. Self- 
consciousness is a pre-eminently " intuitive " act of knowledge. 
But self-consciousness is the experience of a being actively 
cognizing its own doings and sufferings as they actually are, — 
as they, to speak figuratively, occur under its own eye. The 
relation of subject and object, as this relation is involved in 
all cognition, cannot, then, be regarded as a limitation, or a 
bordering concept that merely marks the immense horizon of 
the unknown. This very relation, in which the real subject 
stands to the real object, is an actual, concrete, and indubi- 
table experience ; it is not ignorance ; it is rather that 
commerce of being with itself in which the essence of all 
knowledge exists. In this typical case of self-consciousness, 
surely, experience is its own guarantee of reality. The real- 
ization of this relation, which separates what is really one, 
in order consciously to judge it to be one, capable of acting 
and reacting in a living unity of related existence, is not to 
be spoken of as an impotent deed, a mark of hopeless limita- 
tions, a never ceasing and inescapable temptation to scepti- 
cism and to agnosticism. The rather is it the method of 
mind in knowledge, following the transactions that go on in 
reality. We have no higher type of the divine and absolute 
cognitive activity than the realization by the conscious human 
spirit of the actuality of its own inter-related self-activities. 

At all events, the maintaining of the validity of the distinc- 
tion of subject and object, as actualized in every cognitive 
act, is the sole and sufficient security for all human claims 
to knowledge of every kind. Once let this distinction go, 
with all that is implicated in the distinction as to the being 
and nature of the really existent, and everything slips from 
our grasp. For this dual nature of the Real, as actualized in 
the concrete experience of the Self with itself, is the last for- 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 203 

tress, impregnable and centrally situated in the domain of 
knowledge. If it be taken, nothing remains to mark the 
difference between knowledge and not-knowledge. This 
light, thrown from the experience of subject and object, 
as necessarily distinguished in the very relation which unites 
them, comes from the sun in the solar system of the mind. 
With the obscuration or setting of this sun, no celestial light, 
otherwise derived, can ever break over the scene. Starlight 
and moonlight are not in these heavens. Landscape and 
observer are no longer distinguishable ; landscape and ob- 
server no longer exist. It is not simply as though a more 
than midnight darkness had temporarily fallen over the 
whole earth. It is rather that both the earth and the lights 
set in the heavens to rule over it by day and by night, have 
forever vanished in the limitless void. Nothing is ; for the 
principle of creation and the product of creation are alike 
gone. 

It will be well for the successful termination of our further 
quest after the foundations and limitations of human cogni- 
tion, and also for our peace of mind in viewing the practical 
bearings of the theoretical conclusions, not to forget what has 
just been brought to mind. We repeat, then, — regardless of 
the risk of being accused of needless prolixity. Whatever 
may be the true descriptive history which psychology feels 
obliged to give of the normal development and of the occa- 
sional aberrations of self-consciousness, the import of our 
analysis is unmistakable and undeniable. The reality of the 
subject and the reality of the object, and the actuality of that 
relation between subject and object which is essential to cognition, 
are an indubitable experience in every act of self -consciousness. 
The existence of the subject and the existence of the object, as 
herein given, is not a matter of mere thinking, or of mere be- 
lieving, or of mere mental representation. The relation is not 
an abstraction or an image of that which may, or may not, be 
true in reality. In this supreme and most complete act of 



204 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

knowledge — the knowledge which I have of the here-and-now 
being of myself as objectively determined, thus rather than 
in some other way — the nature of knowledge, with its guar- 
anteed envisagement of reality, most completely and su- 
premely reveals itself. No merely grammatical, or merely 
logical, or merely psychological (if by this latter term we 
understand the superficial description of the content of con- 
sciousness, as a " bundle " or u aggregate " of sensations and 
feelings) account of self-consciousness suffices to satisfy 
the facts. For in the experience of self-consciousness, we 
have given the reality of the subject as an active knower, 
the reality of the object as a being known, and the actuality 
of a relation which distinguishes subject and object and yet 
binds them in a living unity of cognition. Thus much is 
given, — just as truly for the insane man as for the sane, 
or for the victim of so-called " double consciousness," as 
for the proudest possessor of a single self-conscious peerless 
Self. 1 

1 As to the speculative outcome of this fact, when critically and systematically 
expounded, see the author's " Philosophy of Mind," passi?n, and especially chap- 
ters iv., v., vi. Various writers emphasize particular aspects of this fundamental 
truth in more or less forceful and interesting ways. For example, Caspari, 
Grundprobleme der Erkenntnissthatigkeit, p. 100, says : " Hebt man zu Gunsten 
von S (Subject) (Object) auf (Fichle) oder umgekehrt zu Gunsten von das S 
auf (die Sensualisten), oder lassen voir gar und S coincidiren, und zu einem ad- 
herent, beide gemeinschaftlich umfassenden Y zusammenfliessen, so heben voir jedes- 
mal die voahre Natur des Intellects selbst auf." 

In remarking upon Laas' question (Einige Bemerkungen zur Transcendental- 
philosophie, in the Strassburger Abhandlungen zur Philosophie, Freiburg, 
1883) . " What guarantees the identity and uniformity of this Self of mine more 
than the identity and uniformity of Space and of Nature ? " Eiehl affirms (Der 
Philosophische Kriticismus, II., ii., p. 78) : " It is obvious that experience is possible 
only so long and so far as constancy and uniformity actually exist, and are 
thought of as existing, as well on the side of the object as on that of the subject. 
Experience would be destroyed, not merely if we think of the persistence and 
uniformity of objects as annihilated, but also if the subject ceased to be conscious 
of its own Self in the mental representation of the objects. But it must be con- 
fessed that the objective constancy and uniformity is to be recognized ouly 
through the identity of the subject whose correlate it pictures." 

See also Werner (Grundlinien der Philosophie, p. 6, Regensburg, 1885): 
"Das Uebersinnliche erscheint im selbstbewusstem Denkleben des mensehlichen 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 205 

It has been customary to say (chiefly by the old-fashioned 
dogmatists) that, in the case of the knowledge which comes 
through self -consciousness, the being of the subject and the 
being of the object is known as " identical" " I know my- 
self," is its formula. For is it not I that know, and i" that 
am known; and are not the cognizing Self and the cog- 
nized Self, of course, one and the same reality ? How much 
of truth there certainly is in all such doctrine, as well as 
how much of error there may be in some of its applications, 
the critical examination of the concepts of identity and of 
reality is needed to determine. Strictly speaking, I cannot 
affirm either identity or reality of myself — not even as 
known in Self-consciousness — without going through a pro- 
cess of cognition. And it will be a necessary characteristic 
of this, as of every process of cognition, that the distinction 
of subject and object, as valid in reality, should be actualized 
in a concrete experience. So that, in some sort, I as subject 
am not identical with me as object. " I know myself to be 
thus and no otherwise objectively determined ; " this implies 
that the distinction of subject and object as truly as the 
identification of the two, should be realized in the act of 
cognition, if the particular cognitive act is to be an act of 
self-knowledge. But about all this our perplexity and dis- 
tress pass away when it is understood that the conception of 
identity which is customarily introduced at this point is itself 
a most misleading and indeed impossible conception. For 
an identity that admits of no form of differentiation, is an 
identity which on account of the very nature of all cognitive 
processes, can never be known. It is also a form of identity 
which can never be realized ; for to be identical in this way 
would amount to not really being at all. To be dead and 

Geistes gleichsam als ideeles Spiegelbild, dessert Reflex sich erhellend iiber die er- 
fahrungmassig gegebene Wirklichkeit des irdischen Daseins verbreitet. Das geis' 
tige Denkleben in welchem diese Reflexion des Uebersinnlichen vermittelt lasst sich 
sehr wohl einem Spiegel vergleichen, and seine Thatigkeit in Wahrheit eine Speku- 
lation nennen." 



206 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

worse than dead, to be nothing, the mere negation of all 
being, would be the only actual (sic) equivalent for such a 
conception of identity. Especially, however, would it be un- 
true to affirm self-identity of any being which lives and grows, 
in a way to contradict the validity of the distinction of subject 
and object as this distinction is actualized in self-conscious- 
ness ; supremely absurd, too, when it is considered that it is 
self-cognition which touches the heights of rational life and 
rational development, by actualizing that which is the only 
source and guarantee of the concepts both of identity and 
also of reality. 

In the act of self-cognition, a certain unlikeness, an obvious 
and indisputable distinction of subject and object is implicated. 
But their complete incomparability is denied ; and their act- 
ual unification in some form is affirmed. The cognitive act 
itself is an actual unification of the two. For the synthesis of 
knowledge must be so conceived of as not to annul the actu- 
ality of this distinction. The type of the relation is not iden- 
tity, — if by this we mean a complete and indistinguishable 
sameness of characteristics, such as would be equivalent to 
a denial of all process, change, difference in aspects, or for- 
ward movement of life. The type of the relation is rather 
that of a commerce, or intercourse, in which both of the 
" momenta " or factors retain their reality, but are unified by 
taking part, as it were, in a common cause. Really, I am 
not, as subject of my activity in self-consciousness, the same 
as the me which I both make and find to be the object of this 
activity. I am partially, but not wholly self-determined by 
the character of the activity. In comprehending the signifi- 
cance of this statement I gain insight into the nature of 
knowledge and into the nature of reality as well. For it is 
in this experience that the foundations both of epistemology 
and of ontology are laid. 

The study of intellectual development assures us, however, 
that the knowledge of the individual man and of the race 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 207 

recognizes another scarcely less fundamental and important 
distinction. This is the distinction already referred to as 
that made among the objects of cognition. These objects 
divide themselves into things and minds; and since all 
knowledge of other minds comes only through one's growth 
of skill in interpreting the changes in things as signs of 
changes in other streams of consciousness than one's own, 
it may as well be said that all knowledge is of two kinds, — 
knowledge of Things and knowledge of Self. Now this di- 
vision implies a most wonderful process of diremption in 
conscious states; and the wonder of it may be somewhat 
vividly brought before us in the following way. That I 
should know myself — how I think, and feel, and what I 
plan — is indeed fraught with all the mystery which is in- 
separable from the nature of all knowledge. This is a 
mystery, however, which seems less obvious and profound 
because it is inconceivable that I should be in any par- 
ticular "states of consciousness," as we are accustomed to 
say, without some sort of kinship between me and my own 
states. I am certainly, in the main, like myself, whether I 
consider myself as the subject or as the object of the act of 
knowledge. As psychologists used to say: In the case of 
self-knowledge the object is a subject-object, whose substan- 
tial identity with the subject is affirmed as apparently a 
necessary part of the very act of knowledge. But in the 
case of all cognition of things, our experience is, in some 
important respects, of a quite different order. Here the ob- 
ject is given to me, by the act of cognition, as so unlike 
me that I call it a "Thing," — a somewhat not-me because 
belonging, as known by me, to another category of objects. 
And however much one may become confused as to the ac- 
curacy of the objective reference of any particular modifi- 
cation of the sensation-content or the feeling-content of 
consciousness (as, for example, whether the sound I hear is 
a cricket on the window-sill or a tinnitus aurium ; whether 



208 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

the forms I see are insects in the air or muscce volitantes), 
one never thinks of the possibility of confusing one's self 
with other things. I am; and my world of object-things 
is, — such is the twofold division of all that is real 
to me. 

In fact, as has already been indicated, the implicate 
without which all account of cognition becomes absurd, even 
when we try to reduce the sum-total of assured cognition to 
the lowest, most sceptical and agnostic terms, includes the 
existence of things as different examples of the Not-me. 
You and I can never communicate, or discuss, our several 
dogmatic and agnostic positions, without somehow paying 
each other the compliment to assume for each other an 
eatfra-mental existence. But I always remain a thing for 
you, as I am most immediately known by you ; and I am in 
turn obliged to say — begging pardon — you are only a thing 
to me. How now can this mystery be brought about in any 
such manner as to gain credence for itself, that the entire 
world of known objects with the sole exception of the Self, 
should be at first hand known as so unlike the Self as to be 
assigned to an opposite, and even contradictory class of 
objects ? For all knowledge has just been seen to have the 
essential nature of an intercourse, or commerce, between 
two, — a relation in which two factors unite without either 
losing its reality. The whole half, or, for mere bulk, three 
quarters or seven eighths, of our cognition is, then, a com- 
merce which brings us into a living relation of unity with 
beings that are by nature relegated to a sphere lying quite 
out of immediate conscious reference. What wonder, then, 
that many of the more serious students of the problem of 
knowledge have so reacted upon this fact as to fall back- 
wards into the gulf of an identity -hypothesis ! 

It is interesting to notice, however, that our " plain man's " 
consciousness approves of no such backward leap. For him 
the surer experience is what, as he supposes, he immediately 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 209 

and indubitably knows about the nature of things. He is 
not puzzled as to whether he will admit terms of familiar 
acquaintance between himself and an object so wholly foreign 
in origin and character to himself. His hesitations and 
dubitations arise, if at all, when he gets a moment's time to 
consider more reflectively the results of his own self-cog- 
nitions. Things I know; and their relations and uses I 
know, — of course, just precisely as they are ; for what else 
than this does knowledge of them mean ? But what I am, 
and almost whether I am, except at those rare times when I 
attempt a brief, face-to-face acquaintance with myself, are 
questions which seem full of mystery. And by the " Things " 
which he thinks he surely knows as they actually are, he 
means just what certain psychologists and philosophers 
choose to call "Things as they seem," mere "appearance" 
and not "reality." 

Moreover, if the "plain man" becomes a careful observer 
and scientific expert in respect of any particular class of 
things, while retaining the plainness of his unreflecting 
consciousness in respect of the nature, ground, and certitude 
of his knowledge about things, he remains in the same 
happy condition of uncritical dogmatism and realism. 
Things are still thought actually to exist as they seem; but 
now it is rather as they seem when examined by the modern 
improved instrumentation, — by the microscope and spectro- 
scope, and by the various methods of physical and chemical 
analysis. And when the more direct methods of determin- 
ing what things are reach their natural limit, then elaborate 
methods of ratiocination, with more or less of conjectured 
entities, hypothetical forces, and assumed laws of action and 
interaction, are summoned in the interests of increasing our 
common stock of the cognition of things. All this seems 
to the man of science, and to his admirers, very true ; and 
if any particular statement lacks the evidence necessary to 
declare it true (for the man of science is commendably care- 

14 



210 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

ful about his evidence), there is never any ultimate doubt 
raised as to the objects of all such inquiry having a real 
existence after patterns cognizable by the human mind. 

It is important to notice what is the effect upon this body 
of knowledge as to the nature and behavior of things which 
is produced by the sceptical and agnostic outcome of the 
Kantian epistemology. If any one who holds the ordinary 
views, whether he be a master of some form of physical 
science or not, be told that it is his own intellect which 
constructs and gives Objectivity to Nature, to the systematic 
sum-total of really-existent known things, he may finally be 
forced into the admission that the reasoning in proof of this 
position is unanswerable. He may even himself become an 
easy prey for that form of idealism which Kant strove to 
render untenable. Admitting the transcendental ideality of 
all things, he may, in the strength of his reaction against 
the naive assumption of their transcendental reality, fall off 
into the extremes of phenomenalism. But as man of science, 
he will always return to the position that scientific knowl- 
edge is of things, as they really are (tilings — non-egos, not- 
selves). Witness the late Professor Huxley, who, even 
after affirming himself a Berkeleian idealist in his theory 
of knowledge, could with difficulty write five pages further 
without returning to a position of materialistic realism of 
the most uncritical sort. 

The reasons for the strangely inconsistent behavior of 
men, when their theoretical and their practical attitudes 
toward the knowledge of things are compared, might easily 
be given from the psychological point of view. That is to 
say, on examination it can readily be seen why some of the 
contents of consciousness should be allotted to so-called 
Things and some to the Self, why these two should then be 
set in contrast by the mind as Ego and non-ego ; and why a 
sort of certitude and consistency should seem to belong to 
the latter which reaches beyond anything that the Ego itself 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 211 

can claim. But a profounder inquiry into the import of 
the psychical facts shows reasons in certain trains of reflec- 
tive thinking which lead to another conclusion for our theory 
of knowledge, and for our view of the nature of reality as 
well. Things are immediately and certainly known as 
really existent objects of cognition for the Self; they are 
known as so differing from the Self that they cannot be 
identified or confused with its activities or its states: and 
yet they are not so foreign to the deeper and entire nature 
of the Self as to make that kind of commerce or intercourse 
called knowledge impossible between the two. 

The same conditions as those for the origin of the distinc- 
tion between subject and object rule over the further distinc- 
tion between Self and Things. Out of the same stream of 
conscious life, which is ever determining its course in 
accordance with its own nature and also in accordance with 
the configuration of the territory through which it flows, 
this latter distinction emerges. Experience is a sort of 
unity ; and yet it divides itself into internal experience and 
external experience, into a growth of cognitions of Self and 
a growth of cognitions of that which is known as not-self. 
This distinction does not, indeed, belong to the beginning 
of experience ; but neither does it create itself as an act of 
pure caprice. It has its origin in the nature of the mind as 
related to other realities; and yet it can never come to pass 
except as the mind itself by its oivn discriminating, segre- 
gating, and unifying activities, brings it to pass. To speak 
figuratively : a difference in the " stuff " of knowledge, as 
furnished out of the store-house of Reality, must be actively 
discerned and recognized in the constructive process by the 
builder of knowledge. 

Certain of the sensation -contents of consciousness are 
early referred to that sentient and bodily Self which is the 
child's own, and certain others to the things which stand 
in more immediate relation to this self. This process of 



212 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

diremption is chiefly conditioned upon, and guided by, the 
character of those feelings, with their tone of pleasure or 
pain, which fuse with and constitute an inseparable part of 
the sensation-contents. With the infant, the inchoate and 
ill-defined Self is a sort of aggregate of strong-toned bodily 
sensations and feelings of obscure localization, set in con- 
trast with and changing relation to the better defined but 
much less feeling-full sensations, which are localized and 
objectified as its limited world of things. But it is in the 
actualized relations of will to that which resists will, that 
the process of diremption becomes most acute and most 
pronounced. In the melange of feelings which results from 
the movement of the bodily organs in manifold relations of 
pressure and contact, or absence of both, amid a world of 
things external to these organs, certain fixed points of expe- 
rience and groups of such points are gradually gained. 
Contemporaneously, and in a constant process of interaction, 
two strongly marked series of experiences emerge in the one 
experience. On this basis the one experience becomes, by 
activity of the intellect, dirempted. It is no longer simply 
one experience as belonging to the subject of it all, but a 
twofold experience with Self and with Things; or rather 
with myself in changing relations to many different things. 
The chief contents of one aspect of this experience, which 
is one, yet twofold, are a certain less definitely recognized 
group of interior sensations, having a strong feeling-tone, 
and found to be dependent upon that consciousness of self- 
activity which is called the will. The chief contents of the 
other aspect are certain different and more definitely recog- 
nized sensations, mainly of sight and touch, with a feeble 
tone of feeling, and found to be relatively independent of 
the modifications in that consciousness of self-activity which 
is called the will. But the very core of the former is this 
consciousness of self-activity, of will in action; and the 
very core of the latter is the consciousness of being re- 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 213 

sisted, of will as encountering something that " will-not, " 
as it wills. 

All this is, however, only a description of different phases 
or aspects of the one mind in its work of setting part of 
itself over against itself. It only furnishes, therefore, the 
grounds, as it were, on which the mind proceeds to divide its 
own experience into two significantly different classes, but 
without recognizing the significance of its own procedure ; 
and to assign these classes to two opposed subjects. In order 
now to understand and validate this diremptive process as 
genuine cognition, as the setting-forth in consciousness of 
what is true, because the process in consciousness has its 
correlate in the nature and changes of the trans-subjective 
Reality, something must be done more than merely to give 
the description of the process itself. All that can possibly 
be done, however, is to show that the procedure of the 
mind legitimately makes the claims which belong to every 
genuinely cognitive process ; in brief, that we are here deal- 
ing with a case of knoivledge, and not of mere sensation, 
or mere imaging, or mere thinking, or sheer belief. In 
order to show this clearly it is only necessary to analyze 
any genuine act of perception, which reaches the stage of 
cognition of a "Thing." There is the object, posited as 
actual and with an indubitable conviction, and assuredly 
standing in that relation to the cognizing subject which 
is of the very essence of knowledge. Moreover, with an 
equally indubitable conviction is this object posited as not 
a subject-object, as not a state of the self, but as an object- 
object, an actually existent form of the not-me. 

If now, from the point of view of the cognizing subject, 
thorough examination be made of its process or state, includ- 
ing the character of the judgment in which the criticism of 
the content of consciousness terminates, this process or state 
will be found to have every characteristic of a finished and 
assured cognition. In it all the intellectual activities neces- 



214 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

sary to cognition are involved; it is feeling-full, and, on 
being called in question, speedily develops that warmth of 
conviction, and that grasp of the willing Self upon the 
actuality of its object, which are the marks of an act of 
cognition. But especially is it true that, if by repeated 
acts of volition, amounting finally to the extremest possible 
assertion of the will of the knower, the attempt be made 
to determine the non-reality of the external object, the 
attempt ends in failure. Indeed, so true is this that we 
can give no more impressive and truthful, albeit figurative, 
description of what we know this object to be than to say : 
"We know it is as Will opposed to, and yet holding com- 
merce with, our Will." 

Whatever psychology teaches, by way of fact or by way of 
theory, concerning errors of sense, illusions and delusions 
and hallucinations, of various kinds and many degrees, has 
absolutely no bearing on the validity of the knowledge of 
things, as thus far expounded. For the question now under 
consideration does not concern the psycho-physical origin of 
the sensation-content or the feeling-content of the objects of 
sense-perception. Neither does it concern the accuracy of 
the intellectual processes involved in the localization and 
projection, in a mentally constructed world of space-rela- 
tions, of the various forms of these contents. Nor, finally, 
does the present question concern the range and validity of 
our knowledge of things — as to what they actually are — 
through sense-perception. The undisturbed truth of experi- 
ence is simply this : Upon a basis of differing elements in 
our originally united but inchoate experience, an accom- 
plished diremption of the objects of experience into Things 
and Self must be recognized as having all the characteris- 
tics of knowledge; and, moreover, the actuality of things, 
as not-self, is immediately and indubitably given in our 
cognitive experience of them. 

The shifting way in which we are obliged to use terms for 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 215 

the two objects of cognitive experience is largely, but not 
wholly, responsible for the sceptical and agnostic conclu- 
sion regarding the possibility of knowing the real being of 
things. This shifting use is itself determined largely, but 
not wholly, by the actual growth of experience. For this 
growth of experience itself is a growth in our knowledge 
both of Self and of Things. It involves, therefore, neces- 
sarily, a change in the contents of our conceptions answering 
to the words " Things " and " Self. " In the earlier develop- 
ments of knowledge for all men, in most acts of knowledge 
for many men, and in some acts of knowledge for all men, 
the spheres connoted by these two words overlap. For 
example, all the members of one's body may be regarded — 
ev r en the most interior and psychologically insensitive and 
yet supremely important of them, like the cerebral hemi- 
spheres — either as things standing in a peculiarly intimate 
relation to the Self, or as veritable parts of the Self. Thus 
we may say either, "I have headache," or, "My head pains 
me." The headache I have is indubitably a state of the 
Ego, the subject or possessor of which I declare myself 
to be. Suppose the localization to be inexact, it does not 
affect the validity of the cognition which affirms the pain, 
and which ascribes it to the Ego as its pain. Bat the head 
which gives me pain is either perceived or conceived of as 
a thing which is not-Ego, but which stands in a peculiar 
relation to the Ego on account of its ability to cause a pain, 
having such characteristics and being so localized. The 
peculiarity of the relation, and any confusion as to the 
particular thing which stands in this relation, do not at 
all affect the fundamental conditions on which it is given 
to me as a thing. As "a Thing" even if it be my own 
brain, it is conceived of by me and perceived by others as 
an actually existent somewhat that refuses to be identified 
with the Self. 

In brief, in clear-cut scientific cognition and in the veriest 



216 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

hallucinations, in the sanest acts of the soundest minds and 
in the ravings of the mad-house or the vagaries of " double " 
and " multiple " consciousness, this distinction in the char- 
acter of the objects of cognition is maintained as a funda- 
mental distinction. Things and Self cannot be identified; 
neither can they both be sunk in a third somewhat which is 
conceived of after a pattern drawn from analogies afforded 
by neither of the two. 1 They can be unified in reality, as 
they certainly are in some sort unified in every act of com- 
pleted sense-perception (and this is matter of unquestionable 
experience), if at all, only if the conception of one of the 
two — either of Thing or of Self — can be so extended in a 
valid way as to provide an explanation for the other, and 
for the relation of knowledge between the two. The solu- 
tion of this problem, as a problem in ontology, takes us 
into the realm of general metaphysics and even of the phi- 
losophy of religion. As a problem in epistemology, we shall 
have occasion to refer to it again. 

Beyond that narrow but solid ground for standing from 
which is affirmed the actuality of things as not -self, and the 
actuality of the Self as given in the relation of the very act 
of cognition, the cases of the two differ widely. The con- 
ception of the Self grows in the soil of immediate or intui- 
tive knowledge, and it is worthy to be called an indubitable 
envisagement of Reality; but the conception of things, of 
their real nature and their actual relations, is shown to be 
developed from an assumption which has only the value of 
an analogy; but which, if this entire sphere of cognition is 
to be made valid, needs itself to be criticised and defended 
against- sceptical attacks. Anticipating more ultimate con- 
clusions, and speaking strictly, it must be said that the 
definite and concrete conceptions we find ourselves obliged 
(or " privileged " ?) to form of Things, amount to a knowledge 
of their real nature only as a certain assumption is made 

1 Philosophy of Mind, chapter viii. 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 217 

valid. This assumption concerns the right to conceive of 
things after the analogy of our immediate and indubitable 
knowledge of the Self. 

It may be questioned by the defender of the current naive 
metaphysics of physics — either popular or scientific — 
whether men do actually conceive of Things only after the 
analogy of the known Self. If this were so, how could men 
be so sure that things are wo£-selves ? Now the complete 
answer to the former question requires several chapters in 
metaphysics, of a critical and scientific order as opposed to 
that naive thinking in which the question itself arises. But 
the answer to the latter question comes from a combined 
study of psychology and of the history of human reflection. 
This history shows that while men never confuse Self with 
other things, they do, in their early development as individ- 
ual men, and also in the early developments of the race, 
conceive of things quite generally after the very patent 
analogy of the Self. That is to say, children and unculti- 
vated folk of adult years personify things. In doing this 
they impart to them, not only those ideas and voluntary 
activities which seem necessary to account for their purpose- 
ful behavior, but also an entire outfit of feelings, passions, 
and desires, or even of more lofty intellectual and assthetical 
sentiments, such as seems necessary to a rich, content-full 
and valuable existence. Excited and guided in this manner, 
the religions of men have developed themselves all the way 
from the lowest form of fetichism to the more refined wor- 
ship of Nature. The consolations which a feeling of kin- 
ship with the system of things administers, and the dread 
and bondage of that superstition which this way of consid- 
ering things engenders, have arisen from the same habit of 
mind. Take away from art the personification of the trans- 
subjective, through the projection of the image of the subjec- 
tive, and its moving spirit and most valued achievements 
would disappear together ; as the psychology and philosophy 
of aesthetics abundantly show. 



218 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

It is the impression of persons with cultivated scientific 
proclivities, bat without much genuine insight into the 
processes and significance of science, that our present 
knowledge of things has attained the power to surrender the 
necessity, and disprove the applicability, of the aforesaid 
personification of things. And, indeed, most of the naivete' 
has departed, with its poetic charm, before the common- 
sense and the science of modern peoples in their investiga- 
tions of natural objects. Let it not be supposed, however, 
that the sphere of immediate and sure intuition into Nature 
has been enlarged in this way, or that the necessity for 
rendering all our conceptual information into terms whose 
real meaning is derived from face-to-face experiences of the 
soul has been diminished. The thoughtful physicist is 
still forced to confess that he has attained no valid insight 
into the interior construction of Things; he can only tell 
you his generalizations as to how they appear to behave. 
The scientific character of the information he is ready to 
impart consists in the nearer approach to a mathematical 
exactness for the formulas which mark the characteristic 
and uniform modes of this behavior. And should he venture 
upon the hard task of giving to these formulas the most 
scientific representation possible, — for example, in a learned 
treatise upon physics or chemistry, — he is likely to begin 
by confessing that "what Matter really is," we do not know, 
and probably never shall know. At this point it belongs to 
the thinker who sees beyond physics into metaphysics, to 
relieve the physicist from the burden of his excessive 
modesty by pointing out to him that we can tell what any 
" subjects of states " really are, only by telling what they 
most uniformly and consistently do ; and then to reveal the 
profound truth that all the choicest, most impersonal terms 
for even the physical characteristics of matter, if any mean- 
ing realizable in experience is to be given to them, must be 
recognized as abstractions from the immediate experience of 
the Self with itself. 



KNOWLEDGE CF THINGS AND OF SELF 219 

Before this view of the significant difference between the 
knowledge of Things and the knowledge of Self is enforced 
by instancing a few of the more important particulars, atten- 
tion is called to the popular way of looking upon the entire 
problem. This shows clearly that the distinction between 
selves and things is of a quite different order from the dis- 
tinction between the Self and that which is immediately 
known as not-self. In other words, the diremption of the 
cognitive process which gives to immediate consciousness, 
in an intuitive way, two unmistakably different classes of 
objects, Self and Things, is much more fundamental than 
that which results in classifying all things into other-selves 
and things which are not-selves. In knowing you, or in 
knowing the tree, the stone, the star, I immediately and 
indubitably cognize the object as a somewhat really existent 
which is not-me, but which is in the peculiar relation of 
commerce or intercourse with me, that renders it an object 
of my knowledge. But whether this object- is now to be 
classified among the "not-mes" which are conceived of as 
other-selves, or among the "not-mes" which are conceived 
of as things in the sense of being also "not-selves," is a 
further problem for cognition. And it is a problem of a 
quite different order. It is a problem which can never be 
solved except provisionally and with a lowered degree of 
assurance as to the truthfulness of the answer. Witness 
how the whole world of observers is divided over the ques- 
tion of the limits in application for the various characteris- 
tics of the life of consciousness and self-consciousness. 
Books on "the psychic life of micro-organisms," or "the 
soul-life of plants," or the universally present "mind-stuff," 
by aggregation of which the human mind is sometimes 
supposed to be satisfactorily explained, startle, at first, the 
so-called common-sense of men. But, then, they also excite 
a pleased curiosity; and they often end in convincing their 
readers that the old-time mythological way of looking at 



220 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

things was not so palpably absurd after all. For, perhaps, 
men nowadays have grown, under the influence of devotion 
to impersonal entities and bare mathematical formulas, too 
jealous of the priceless gift of consciousness, and too ready 
to claim it all for that species of animals to which they 
themselves belong. That the reasons on which the modern 
theory of evolution has built up this sort of distinctions 
are very " shaky " may well be admitted by any one who has 
experimented with the spinal cord of a headless frog, or who 
has patiently observed the behavior of the tendrils of climb- 
ing plants. 

If, however, the proposal is once made to extend the work 
which is critical of differentiations so as to undermine the 
very distinction on which knowledge itself is based, we are 
met by a totally different order of resistance. Such a work 
of destructive criticism, if accomplished, would bring down 
the whole house of human science upon our heads. But 
this has already been made sufficiently clear for the present ; 
and it is time to turn our critical inquiries in another 
direction. 

What it is really to be a Self, we have made the subject 
of detailed inquiry in other connections. 1 It may suffice in 
this connection to say that the description of such a reality 
can only be given in terms of self-consciousness. It is only 
what I am for myself to know that can define what I really 
am as a Self. Of course, then, other selves must be known 
to me only by interpretation of signs, conceptually, and as 
constructed after the pattern of my own self-known Self. 
The existence of such other selves is an implicate of cogni- 
tion, just so soon as cognition undertakes to be communi- 
cative, — even if (and especially if) the communication be 
argumentative in the interests of a thorough scepticism or 
a despairing agnosticism. It is an implicate, however, 
which involves in its origin and application a complicated 

1 Philosophy of Mind, especially chapters iii.-vi. 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 221 

experience, both of the so-called intuitive and of the con- 
ceptual kind. To most of the animals and possibly to the 
plants and to so-called "mind-stuff," men are accustomed 
to ascribe some of the lower forms of consciousness, but 
without ascribing those higher forms of self-consciousness 
the possession and actualizing of which are deemed neces- 
sary to entitle any being to be called "a Self," in the full 
meaning of that term. 

There remains now that class of objects of our cognition 
which are known as not-selves, in any assignable meaning 
of the word "Self," but rather as things in the most com- 
plete assignable meaning of the word "Thing." Of these 
beings, too, all human knowledge, beyond that very narrow 
but solid basis which has already been distinguished as 
implicate in the way in which they are given as objects of 
our more immediate apprehension, is, of course, conceptual 
knowledge. This conceptual knowledge of mere things is 
of two kinds, negative and positive. As negative, it con- 
sists in denying to things certain of the characteristics 
which selves are conceived of as having, — perhaps, in the 
extreme case, in denying any faintest semblance of con- 
sciousness, even such as, according to Leibnitz, every monad 
must possess in order to exist at all. But the positive char- 
acteristics which things are conceived of as having are all 
abstractions from the definite, concrete, and intuitive knowl- 
edge of the Self by itself. 

Suppose, for example, that one maintains the substan- 
tiality of things, or rather of that substrate of all particular 
things which is called " Matter, " and in which, in a moment 
of great enthusiasm, a celebrated student of physics dis- 
cerned " the promise and potency " of every form of life. 
"Matter," as a word, signifies only, as all admit, an ab- 
straction. But what is it, in reality to continue to be, — to 
exist substantially, while the modes or manifestations of the 
existence are continually being changed ? No answer can 



222 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

be given to this question which is not framed after the 
analogy of the experience of the Self with itself, as the self- 
recognized subject of its own changing states. Only as the 
subject of knowledge, the knower, comes to the recognition of 
his own claim to have in some sort a real and permanent being, 
not simply " in spite of," but in and through his own changes, 
can he attach to things any meaning-full conception of a 
substantial existence. 1 Thus the substantiality, or permanent 
existence in reality, of any particular external object is 
always hypothetical and depends upon the validity of concep- 
tual thinking. Substantiality, or permanent existence for 
the Self, so far as it can be claimed to be known, is given in 
the form of an immediate and indisputable intuition, in every 
act of self-conscious cognition. And the validity of the hy- 
pothesis by which we extend the conception of substantiality 
to things depends upon the truthfulness of the assumption 
that, after the analogy of our own experience, things may 
be considered as in reality permanent subjects of changing 
states. Otherwise the bond that holds them together is 
merely subjective ; and we must adopt Berkeley's esse est 
percipi, or a modification of John Stuart Mill's view, and 
resolve the substantiality of things into our " belief " in 
the possibility of having a particular series of sensations 
repeated. 

If, again, inquiry be made into the grounds and the charac- 
ter of the knowledge of things as particular, and as standing 
in definite relations to each other, the same conclusion fol- 
lows. All such knowledge also is conceptual ; and the form of 

1 Kaulich maintains that inasmuch as, in the last instance, all knowledge de- 
pends upon the subject's thought of itself, and this thought is a demonstration 
of the reality of the subject, and receives from this its content, such an act of 
thought (durch sich selbst gewisse) is not to be apprehended as merely a formal 
act, but that a metaphysical signification belongs to it, besides the certainty of 
the existence of the subject which is given through it. In self-consciousness, 
then, we have the bridge which leads over from the domain of merely formal 
thinking into the domain of the real. See Ueber die Moglichkeit, das Ziel, und 
die Grenzen des Wissens, pp. 21 f. 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 223 

the concepts bears in each instance the unmistakable tokens 
of resemblance to their parent, the mind. In recognition of 
this truth, Wundt, 1 when treating of the distinction between 
particular objects and the self-distinction of the subject, 
remarks : " The circumstance that the thinking subject knows 
itself as one of these objects, and that it is conscious of its 
independent existence {Selhststandigkeit) through its own 
voluntary motion is manifestly here (that is, in the distinc- 
tion of external objects) of decisive influence upon the elab- 
oration of external perceptions." By following out the same 
line of thinking we discover that the " natures " ascribed to 
different things are only the conceptual modes of their self- 
activity in changing relations to other things. That the 
hidden qualities and forces with which we endow things — 
especially the possession of " force " in general, or of some 
" mode of energy " — are conceptions abstracted from our 
experience as self-active in relation to the objects of our 
cognition, has been pointed out so clearly, and so often, that 
it would be inexcusable to repeat the argument here. Indeed, 
we have just seen how in the complex operations of what we 
call " Will " as connected with sense-perception, there is 
involved the mental representation of a real being for things, 
and of a reciprocal action between subject and object. And 
if the empty term " Energy," or " Force," be displaced by a 
word which has a meaning representable in some concrete, 
actual experience, such word is found to signify our immedi- 
ate knowledge of ourselves as wills. For all has been said 
regarding the nature of things that can be said from this 
standpoint merely, when the same self-derived conception is 
applied to them, and they are called " other-Will." 

The epistemological doctrine of perception by the senses 
as the primary form of the cognition of things emphasizes the 
same important truths. We may properly follow Zeller 2 in 

1 System der Philosophie, pp. 134 f. 

2 Vortrage und Abhandlungen, iii., pp. 225 f. 



224 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

his analysis and attempt to show the very constitution of 
our perceptions to be such that, from whatever direction we 
may approach them, we unavoidably plunge ourselves into 
hopeless obscurities and contradictions, if we do not refer our 
mental representations to subjects that are different from ' 
ourselves and, so far forth, external to us. We may even go 
much further and show that it belongs inseparably to the sense- 
perceptions of man to have fused with them, as an organic 
and integrating factor, the irresistible conviction of a Reality 
apprehended and belonging to the objects of his perceptive 
acts. Perception believes, and must believe, in itself as an 
indubitable experience of the trans-subjective. It is not an 
arbitrary, it is not even a voluntary or an avoidable affair, 
that we interpret the collective content of our perceptive acts 
into a cognition of the trans-subjective. And if a distinction 
be made between perception and cognition, and between the 
character and the amounts of the real given in these two men- 
tal processes, it must still be admitted that the only fully 
justifiable means and first source of all knowledge of things 
is to be found in perception. The instant, however, the 
implicates of perception are extended beyond the bare mental 
positing of a really existent somewhat which is given there- > 
and-now as a not-me, the total cognition can be enlarged 
only in terms of mind-life. Perceptive cognition is inter- 
pretative of mind-life. What the Thing is becomes known 
to us only so far as we are prepared to consider it as a man- 
ifestation of the presence and power of mind-life. 

Moreover, as perceptive cognition grows, by repeated and 
intelligent applications to it of the power of reflective think- 
ing, the sphere of the assured knowledge (or science) of things 
increases. This knowledge becomes more and more concep- 
tual. Things are more and more endowed with attributes and 
powers which our enlarging perceptive experience of them 
seems to require for its own most satisfactory interpretation 
and remoter explanation. The problematical " somewhat " 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 



O.O}. 



which is primarily known as posited, felt to be irresistibly 
believed in, and grasped upon by an act of will that finds itself 
resisted, further defines itself as having an abiding reality 
most manifold and full of content. But in all this growth of 
knowledge there is a most important difference between the 
knowledge of Things and the knowledge of Self. In the latter 
kind of knowledge there is no transcendental limitation, or 
merely figurative employment of abstract concepts which ex- 
perience has no means of filling with the concrete and clearly 
cognized reality. In the knowledge of Self " no distinction 
can be made between a thing-in-itself and a phenomenon. . . . 
I know reality as it is itself, in so far as I am that reality 
myself." l Self-knowledge is always an envisagement of real- 
ity, or an interpretation of some experience which is an 
envisagement of reality. But the case with the knowledge 
of things is far different. That the really existent is known 
must indeed be affirmed in both cases ; and that the really ex- 
istent is known as not-me is true of all cognitions of things. 
It does not follow, thereupon, that the further qualifications 
in reality, of Things and of Self, are known either to the 
same extent or in the same way. On the contrary, all the 
further qualifications of things are known only conceptually 
and as the projections into things, so to speak, of the immedi- 
ately known qualifications of the Self. 

We sum up the long discussion of this very difficult sub- 
ject in the following statement of truths which it is intended 
by repetition to make clear. Knowledge, by its very nature, 
validates in reality the distinction between subject and object. 
Even in that form of cognition which is called the knowledge 
of Self, this distinction is not to be overlooked or explained 
away. Self-consciousness attains a knowledge of the Self, 
as acting subject of changing states, and yet as objectively 

1 On this whole matter compare the author's " Philosophy of Mind," chapters 
iv. and v., and Paulsen, " Introduction to Philosophy," p. 367, from whom the 
sentence above is quoted. 

15 



226 KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 

determined otherwise than by its own conscious activity. It 
is thus a cognition of Self as both active and passive, — as a 
real being, in an objectively constituted and determined sys- 
tem of beings. But cognition, by its very nature, also vali- 
dates the distinction in objects between Self and not-self. 
This distinction, too, must be accepted as valid in reality and 
independent of our activity, whether in thinking or in any 
other form of action. The distinction is given as belonging 
to that diremptive process which is lost in the origins of our 
conscious life, but which is so fundamental, incisive, and 
insistent that it cannot be separated from the development 
of knowledge itself. 

On the basis of yet more complicated and doubtful infer- 
ences, we distinguish that entire world of objects which are 
not-the-Self into groups that either claim or are denied the 
possession of the characteristics we know ourselves to have. 
Thus, a coarse and doubtful, yet practically useful and, to a 
large extent scientifically defensible, secondary distinction is 
made ; and all the objects not recognized as our Self are 
divided into other selves and other things. But both for 
other selves, and for other realities that are not selves but 
are things, no further conceptual qualifications are possible 
but such as are derived from the same immediate experience 
with the Self. These two kinds of beings are thus separated, 
negatively, by denying to one of them certain likenesses to 
the Self which we affirm the other to possess. But all posi- 
tive knowledge, all the qualifications which can be interpreted 
in terms of actual, concrete experience, are in both cases taken 
from the same source. What other selves are is known only 
because we immediately and assuredly know what our own 
Self is. 

But what things that are not-selves really arc, we can only 
tell by a series of purely negative concepts, unless we are 
satisfied to affirm that, in some respects at least, all things 
are positively like ourselves. So that the truth of all human 



KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS AND OF SELF 227 

conceiving* of things depends upon the right to maintain some 
sort of important kinship, as an accompaniment and off-set, 
as it were, to a certain number of vaguely conceived and 
shifting differences between Things and Self. To affirm a 
complete identity between the two is, therefore, to contradict 
the plainest content of all knowledge, whether as given in inter- 
pretative perception, or in the scientific conception, of things. 
But so to separate the two as to make the commerce of knowl- 
edge between them impossible, is to set up an unwarrantable 
dualism on the basis of a difference which the analysis of the 
cognition of things shows not to exist. For, finally, while 
the knowledge of Self may attain an intuitive penetration 
to the heart of Reality, the knowledge of Things remains an 
analogical interpretation of their apparent behavior into terms 
of a real nature corresponding, in important characteristics, to 
our own. The cognition of the world of things by the human 
mind actually takes place with the passionate and determined 
assumption of a right to know what things really are. The 
admission of this right extends and validates our system of 
concepts relating to things. It is, therefore, an assumption 
of the highest epistemological value. We shall return to it 



CHAPTER VIII 

DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

SEVERAL questions which, although they often constitute 
the principal matter of heated epistemological discus- 
sion, are really of only subordinate importance, may fitly be 
gathered together under the title placed at the head of this 
chapter. They all belong, indeed, to the fuller elucidation of 
the one problem of epistemology ; and any light which is 
thrown upon them will be reflected in such a way as to make 
yet clearer the intrinsic nature of human cognition and the 
extent and surety of the fundamental grounds on which the 
structure of human cognition stands. For this reason a cer- 
tain scrappy and heterogeneous character may be pardoned in 
the appearance of the following thoughts. 

Even to speak of Degrees of Knowledge will appear in the 
eyes of many, at least at first sight, to imply a misleading 
distinction or almost a misdemeanor. For, as is popularly 
said, if a thing is so, it is so ; and if you " know " it to be 
so, then you do know, and not merely think, or believe, it 
to be so. It might possibly be added by the reader of the 
previous chapters, — either with a mixture of fear that the 
work of validating knowledge which has thus far been done 
is about to be overthrown, or with the agreeable feeling of 
the confirmed sceptic when he finds a champion of rational 
faith about to contradict himself : " How can there be degrees 
of knowledge, if it is the very nature of knowledge to have 
the surety which has been ascribed to it ? " 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 229 

In attempting the question whether " degrees " in human 
knowledge are to be admitted, it is, of course, first of all 
necessary to determine in what senses it is proposed to 
understand the words employed. Not, by any means, that 
this inquiry is a merely verbal inquiry ; but it is an ob- 
vious fact that to speak of degrees always implies some 
standard of measurement. The proposal, therefore, to dis- 
cuss the degrees of knowledge implies the application of some 
kind of a common standard to the different classes of cogni- 
tive experiences. We are, then, in search of a thermometer 
which will mark, however roughly, the rise and fall of the 
feeling of conviction ; or of a rod and chain which will 
determine the magnitude of the convicting considerations ; 
or of a theodolite which will help discern the remoter fixed 
points by which it is proposed finally to orientate ourselves ; 
or, finally, perhaps, of a graded perimeter of magnificent 
proportions which will enable the wise critic to measure 
exactly the arc covered by any given cognitive judgment 
upon the total sphere of human science. 

If now the thoughts of men, as expressed both in their 
language and in their conduct, be carefully regarded, it ap- 
pears that there are two widely different meanings which 
they consider themselves justified in employing, when speak- 
ing of degrees of human cognition. One meaning has regard 
to the strength of the conviction, as reposing on clearly recog- 
nized grounds, with which any cognitive judgment is affirmed. 
Here the standard of measurement is graded by the approach 
made toward an ideal which is talked about — albeit vaguely 
and often most ignorantly — as " absolute. " But if we in- 
quire more particularly into the interior structure of this 
ideal of absolute knowledge, we are led into considerations 
of the most unexpected and portentous character. For the 
word " absolute " is always a signal which sounds the call to 
a long chase and a tedious hunt, if indeed any game at all 
reward us by the close of the day. We shall, however, soon 



230 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

indicate the direction in which such tracks are sure to allure 
our quest, and also something as to the value of that which 
may be gained by its successful termination. 

The other meaning in which the ascription of degrees is 
applied to human cognition signifies a quite different stand- 
ard of measurement. According to this second standard, 
different cognitive acts are arranged along a scale of higher 
and lower gradations ; this arrangement, of course, implies 
some means of vertical rather than horizontal measurement, 
as it were. Thus what is called " scientific knowledge " may 
be affirmed to be higher than ordinary knowledge ; and, per- 
haps, philosophical knowledge gets credit for the merit of 
having several degrees of still greater elevation along this 
graded standard. On points of this sort, however, one must 
always expect a wide divergence of opinion. Claims are 
thrust in upon us from this side and from that, varying in 
their cogency as they are presented by different claimants 
and under the differing circumstances of the history of human 
development. For example, by one person, at all times in his 
estimate, or by the majority of persons at certain times in the 
life of the race, religious and artistic knowledge (if the word 
" knowledge " is allowed at all with reference to religion 
and art) will be declared " higher " than any other sort of 
knowledge ; but by other persons and at other times, scien- 
tific or practical knowledge will be raised to the place of 
superior altitude along the scale. We are not interested 
just now to inquire whether religious and artistic knowledge 
can, or can not, be rendered scientific ; or in what sense, if 
any, it is to be distinguished from practical knowledge. But 
certainly, this wide-spread habit of rating cognitions by 
bringing them up, or putting them down, along an. ideal 
scale of values is a most impressive phenomenon. Men, in 
general, either boast themselves over their fellows because of 
the claim to possess some more desirable and valuable sort 
of knowledge; or else they lament their own constitutional 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 231 

and educational restrictions which they regard as debarring 
or hindering them from certain higher forms of knowledge. 
The late Mr. Romanes, for example, at one time in his brief 
but interesting life, appeared to himself to have lost both 
knowledge and faith of the theistic order, out of his assured 
experiences. Yet he always professed sincerely his regret 
over an inability to retain, or to win back, something of 
knowledge that possessed such a high degree of intrinsic 
value. This inability he ascribed to an indisposition, not 
wholly devoid of will, to leave the beaten tracks of the 
scientific intellect for certain cognitions, or beliefs, attractive 
to his feelings. Apparently, at the last, he thought of himself 
as having regained a kind of rational hold on religion's great 
postulate, under the impulse and guidance of feeling, by an 
act of voluntary seizure, — in such way, however, as not to 
violate his continued confidence in the fundamental principle 
of all science, the objective validity of the law of causation. 
Such an experience is popularly called " faith " rather than 
knowledge. So, too, do we find a certain class of books — 
in our opinion suggestive and practically helpful to many 
minds, rather than profound and trustworthy for continued and 
progressive reflection — like Mr. Kidd's "Social Evolution," 
and Mr. Balfour's " The Foundations of Belief," virtually 
recommending the supremacy of intellect in the cognition 
of certain kinds of truth, and the supremacy of feeling in 
the faith of certain other kinds of truth. Yet the latter 
truths as judged by sesthetical and practical standards, are, 
conceded to be of the higher order. In all such cases the 
assumption seems common that, so far as the defensible 
grounds in reality, and the logical processes connecting con- 
clusions with these grounds are concerned, " science" in the 
narrower meaning of the word, is alone worthy to be called 
cognition. 

How much of truth there is in the above-mentioned as- 
sumption, we shall discuss later on. The thing now to be 



232 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

noticed concerns the import of any such discussion. Cer- 
tainty the discussion itself implies some ideal standard of a 
quite different kind from that which defines the degrees of 
knowledge when these degrees are measured as differing in 
surety based on recognized grounds. This inquiry assumes 
the value of truth in its relation to life as constituting also 
a fitting standard of measurement. Is a man's ideal of 
value the exact correspondence of his mental representations 
to the carefully formulated connections of objective phe- 
nomena ? Then scientific truth is the highest kind of truth. 
To such an extent may this be carried that the microscope, 
telescope, crucible, and mathematics, may finally seem to 
such a man the only means of arriving at a high degree of 
real knowledge. But if one's ideal is rather that afforded by 
a vivid feeling of the worth of self-conscious life in general, 
and by the mental and practical grasp upon the principles of 
conduct, it is evident that another kind of cognition, if attain- 
able at all, will be ranked higher in degree than so-called 
scientific cognition. But the one truth implied by both stand- 
ards, and by all contest over the supremacy of any sort of 
knowledge, is a certain doctrine of the teleology of knowledge. 
This doctrine too, has its roots in psychology, which shows 
us that every kind and degree of cognition involves all the 
so-called faculties of mind in a living unity of action. The 
epistemological conclusion follows, not as an abstract theory, 
but as a recognition of the universal import of the language 
and conduct of men. Cognition cannot be considered apart 
from life. Whatever hind of value knowledge has, and what- 
ever degree is attainable in any particular kind of value, 
knowledge is also always means to an end that lies above itself 
Whether one says credo ut intelligam or intelligo ut credam, 
and whether one rates the satisfactions of faith or the satis- 
factions of intellect most highly, the true state of the case 
remains the same. All men set up in speech and in conduct 
some ideal of a life that has worth ; and they rate their own 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 233 

attainments, and the attainments of others, in the matter of 
cognition, according to their ideal of the life that has supreme 
worth. It appears, then, even at this stage in our inquiry 
that the import of cognition is necessarily teleological, and 
that sesthetical and ethical " momenta " cannot possibly be 
excluded from the theory of knowledge. To these important 
and fruitful thoughts we shall return again and again. For 
not only are they portions of every well-considered philoso- 
phy of knowledge, but they also serve to connect a theory 
of knowledge with the philosophy of conduct, the philosophy 
of art, and the philosophy of religion. 

Men commonly distinguish, and often very sharply, between 
opining, believing, thinking, and mere dreaming, on the one 
hand, and knowledge, on the other hand. The character- 
istics which mark this distinction are of two kinds ; yet 
these two kinds are so related in the individual processes of 
cognition, as well as in the growth of cognition, that they 
are mutually dependent and mutually serviceable. They 
are, first, the intensity and tenacity of the conviction which 
belongs to the judgment terminating the mental process ; 
and, second, the clearness and completeness of the conscious 
recognition given to the grounds upon which this judgment 
bases itself. Because both these characteristics can be tested, 
or realized, in the consciousness of the cognizing subject, all 
men make, more or less intelligently, a distinction between 
knowledge and other allied mental states. Yet consider 
what strange confusion of language and practice prevails in 
this entire matter ! Many men affirm knowledge for them- 
selves on grounds which would avail with difficulty to warrant 
other men in pronouncing even a doubtful opinion ; and the 
affirmation is " backed up " with a warmth and tenacity of 
conviction which others reserve for only the most certain and 
important of universally accepted practical truths. In some 
minds this way of mental seizure upon the " stuff " of opinion, 
with a view at once to convert it into the finished product 



234 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

of cognition, appears habitual or even constitutional. But 
other minds, especially those that possess the so-called scien- 
tific bent and method and habit, scarcely venture to affirm 
knowledge of any kind ; and would willingly give to all the 
accepted categorical judgments in which the matter-of-fact 
basis of science consists, the pale and sickly cast of mere 
opinion. Is it time to forget how Dr. Bastian affirmed that, 
"for a fact," he saw living forms spontaneously generated 
in thoroughly sterilized fluid; and how Mr. Romanes wrote 
to Darwin his intention to " believe " in pangenesis, whether 
he could establish it by proof or not ? 

It is generally admitted that " opinion " is a word to be 
used for those of our judgments which cannot be so clearly 
connected with grounds as to render them entitled to the term 
" cognitive " ; and also that such judgments do not warrant, 
and cannot rationally receive, the same degree of conviction 
as that which attaches itself to genuine cognitive judgments. 
By " belief " we oftenest intend to mark those mental atti- 
tudes in which judgment is pronounced under the influence 
of feeling, but with little or no satisfactory recognition of its 
justifying grounds, and generally, therefore, with a weaker 
degree of conviction. When men reason, however, and affirm 
the judgment in which the process of reasoning terminates as 
merely their " thought about," rather than their " knowledge 
of" any subject, they usually mean to emphasize a distinc- 
tion somewhat different from the foregoing. Thinking, as a 
mental performance, is per se a placing of the judgment on 
consciously recognized grounds ; no one can, therefore, prop- 
erly say that he thinks thus and so about any matter of judg- 
ment who has not really done some thinking — or tracing 
out of the grounds of his judgment. The words " I think," 
rather than the words " I know," may be employed, how- 
ever, either because the path of judgments, across which 
the thinking lies, is not itself wholly clear ; or because 
the path, although itself clear, does not lead to any ground 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 235 

of the kind which can be called immediate or intuitive 
cognition. 

The distinction between knowledge and dreaming — or any 
form of that merely reproductive or more constructive associ- 
ation of ideas of which dreaming is the popular type — is of a 
still different character. Doubtless, if the question as to the 
amount of cognition possible in dream-life is seriously raised, 
it receives from experience a somewhat doubtful and contra- 
dictory answer. Most intelligent persons are accustomed to 
regard their dreams as having, at best, little value in promoting 
a growth of genuine cognition ; science, at any rate, does not 
come by way of dreaming, and few, if any, are the contribu- 
tions to the assured body of scientific truths which have been 
made by the most florid dreamers. Other persons, on the con- 
trary, go to the extreme of attaching a superior significance 
to the impressions, the mental pictures of present or approach- 
ing realities, which arise in the mind during its dream-life. 
It is not our present intention to deny the existence of dreams 
of anticipation, revelation, or prophecy ; or to dispute the ac- 
curacy of the alleged facts on which the efficacy of this means 
of attaining knowledge is affirmed. Perhaps Tartini did 
actually dream out his " Devil's Sonata," and Yoltaire, one 
version of his song to Henriadne. Dannecker's colossal 
" Christus " may have first appeared to him as a dream- 
image ; and Jean Paul may be reciting correctly facts of 
experience when he maintains that in dreams he often saw 
sights, especially countenances and eyes, incomparable, and 
which remained of influence with him for a long time. Such 
experiences, however, are scarcely to be called cognition ; or 
if so-called at all, such cognition is certainly of a low degree 
both of surety and of value. Prognostications of a definite 
sort may also come in dreams : as in the case of the man of 
whom old Galen tells, who dreamed his leg had turned to 
stone, and awoke to find it paralyzed. Thus Aristides is said 
to have dreamed in the temple of ^Esculapius that a bull 



236 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

wounded him in the knee, at the spot where a tumor almost 
immediately appeared. Arnold de Villanova felt himself 
bitten by a black cat in the foot, where the next day a can- 
cerous ulcer appeared ; and Gessner perished of a malignant 
pustule which appeared in his breast a few days after he had 
been bitten, in a dream, by a poisonous serpent. As to the 
psycho-physical explanation of such artistic and premonitory 
psychoses, the modern science of psychology is not greatly at 
a loss. They only emphasize the natural and acquired talent 
at construction and interpretation, of the human image-mak- 
ing faculty, which sometimes hits it right in a. manner ap- 
proaching the surest instincts of the animals, — but then, even 
oftener, hits it wrong. What should now be remembered, 
however, is that these forms of consciousness, for the most 
part, incontestably lack just those characteristics that distin- 
guish cognition from every other form of mental life. Hence 
the wise Sirach declares : " Dreams deceive many people, 
and fail those who build on them." 

In this connection it should be noticed that even the most 
vivid sense-perceptions in dream-life, as a rule, lack the 
characteristics of genuine cognition by the senses. We are 
not sure that the words " as a rule " might not be converted 
into " universally," if only the distinction could always be 
accurately drawn between the coloring which the act of wak- 
ing, recognitive memory imparts to the dream and the coloring 
which it actually had, as a dream, at the time of its occur- 
rence. Generally, if not universally, nothing strictly resem- 
bling cognition by the senses — perceptive knowledge of 
things — takes place in dreams. But then, four fifths of 
what is called perception in daily waking life lacks the char- 
acteristics of a fully established cognition of things. For 
example, I pass rapidly along the streets, thinking over some 
topic which interests me, or intent upon getting somewhere 
in the pursuit of some plan. The series of mental images, 
objectly determined, to be sure, yet scarcely noticed and not 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 237 

criticised or judged at all, cannot be said to amount to a fully 
established cognition of series of things. If I afterward ask 
myself, What have I seen by the way ? the question is a 
challenge to that critical and judging attitude which was 
lacking to the original series of mental images ; and the re- 
sult may be the establishment now, by recognitive memory, of 
a representative cognition of things. But it is precisely this 
characteristic of critical judgment which is ordinarily lacking 
to the sensuous impressions of dream-life ; the latter may 
therefore have a startling vividness and intensity without, 
for that reason, furnishing the characteristics of objective 
cognition. 

Occasionally, however, the critical process which thinking 
brings to bear upon mental images, in order to test, as it 
were, their fitness to become terms in a cognitive judgment 
does take place in dreams. Oftenest this occurs while one 
is moving along the border line between waking and sleeping. 
Modern experiments have shown clearly that during the last 
three quarters, or four fifths of the seven or eight hours of 
healthy sleep, the curve which measures the depth of sleep 
runs almost parallel with the line of waking. The stream of 
consciousness then becomes a mixture of two classes of ele- 
ments and two corresponding sets of considerations. Reality 
beats its way in fitfully and spasmodically upon the fantastic 
domain of dreams ; it colors the dreams without converting 
them into waking cognitions, or it gets a momentary standing 
in the stream of consciousness, from which to push back into 
oblivion the dream-land itself. We, the conscious subjects 
of the states (fitfully half self-conscious and half conscious 
of a reality not-ourselves), are still, for the most part, sub- 
jected to the reproductive and low-thoughted creative activity 
of the image-making faculty. This activity weaves before us 
beautiful and wonderful fabrics, and again patterns of most 
absurd and monstrous shapes. But it does not tell us what is 
true. And until we can " come to our self," can so get our 



238 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

bearings as to criticise what we see, and to think whether it 
will fit in to the entire structure of knowledge, we cannot tell 
whether we are sleeping or waking ; whether what we behold 
as not-me is some real thing or is the pure product of our 
creative phantasy. Now, lo ! we are wide awake, and all is 
changed. We have entered again into that form of soul-life 
in which knowledge asserts its own characteristic differentia- 
tion from mere opining, mere believing, mere having of sen- 
suous impressions, or thoughts, or associated mental images. 
We come down hard now upon our cognitive judgments, 
stand ready to defend them as resting upon grounds which 
can be given to the recognition of other men, and exercise a 
sturdy, common-sense confidence in their validity for the 
beings and relations of the really existent world. Armed 
thus, we turn with cheerful and courageous spirit to smile at 
our dreams and to face the actual beings and transactions of 
the daily life. 

But while the distinction between cognition and other 
allied forms of experience has reference to an absolute stan- 
dard, the distinction itself is not absolute. The rather is it 
relative — to the standard. All men have some sort of an 
ideal of knowledge, which is indisputable as to the strength 
and tenacity of the conviction accompanying its grasp upon 
reality, and indubitable in the full aspect of the reasons 
which justify, by making rational, the attitude of feeling and 
will toward its truth. To attain such knowledge is to be 
wholly satisfied in one's own being by the character of the 
commerce thus obtained with other being than one's own. 
In the experience of such acts of cognition, one cannot rea- 
sonably doubt, and one does not feel willing to doubt. Looked 
upon from the side of intellection, the evidence for the truth 
of the cognitive judgment is complete ; looked upon from the 
side of affective disposition, belief is cordial, harmonizing, 
satisfactory ; looked upon from the side of volition, the affir- 
mation or negation is an act that is devoid of wavering, and 



DEGKEES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 239 

that appears as a grasping of the real being of the object 
by the inmost being of the subject. Such an attitude of the 
whole soul toward Reality is called absolute knowledge — 
so far as the term " absolute " can be applied to human 
cognition, regarded even as an ideal. 

Now, however, it appears that different degrees of approach 
to this ideal of an absolute cognition are classed together, or 
apart, according to a variety of changing conditions. As to 
evidence, the kind and amount required to warrant knowl- 
edge, in distinction from opinion or belief, varies greatly, not 
only in dependence upon the characteristics of the cognizing 
subject, but also in respect of the character of the object of 
knowledge, the kind of knowledge, the amount of evidence 
obtainable, etc. The vague term " sufficient reason " affords 
no help here. The rather is it one of several terms due to 
Leibnitz and his followers, which has continued to seduce 
certain minds, peculiarly liable to errors of formalism, into 
supposing that logical formulas can afford satisfactory tests 
of real knowledge. But no definition, not to say description, 
can ever be given as to precisely how much, or as to what 
kind of evidence is sufficient. Suppose, for instance, that 
an appeal be taken to the evidence of the senses, with the 
opinion that upon it alone, when clear and indubitable, the 
rational confidence of an absolute cognition can be reposed. 
And now we have to deal, on the one hand, with the man 
who " thrusts his fists against the posts, and still insists he 
sees the ghosts," and on the other hand, with the German phi- 
losopher who declares that " he will not believe a miracle even 
if he sees one with his own eyes." In such cases as these 
there can be no doubt as to the relativity of knowledge, in 
the form of dependence upon the total bent and entire past 
experience of the cognizing subject, as well as upon the vary- 
ing characteristics of the object of cognition. 

Account must also be taken of the reciprocal influence of 
the different principal factors of an act looking toward cogni- 



240 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

tion, in determining whether it shall be accepted as a valid 
cognition, or only be allowed the rank of an opinion, a belief, 
a thought, or a product of imagination. Here one's experi- 
ence is that of trying to bring about an adjustment of all 
these factors so as to render the mind in harmony with itself, 
and, so to speak, in agreement with the really existent that 
lies "beyond" the mind. If we find evidence in perception, 
or in thought, that the fact is so, the principle true, or that 
the event will happen, then we feel a corresponding increase of 
conviction, and firmness of will in laying down the cognitive 
judgment, " It is so " ; or, " It is true " ; or, " It will happen." 
But if the right kind of affective and voluntary attitude does 
not develop in correspondence with a clarifying recognition 
of the evidence, then the mind fails of knowledge in its own 
estimate ; it feels " in reason bound " to remain in the state 
of mere opinion or mere belief. In many cases, however, — 
and, especially, in cases of so-called practical or religious 
truth, — feeling, with its motive effects in the voluntary attitude 
or tendency, takes the lead of intellection. We think, we 
believe, we are of the cherished opinion, that it is so, and yet 
we refrain from saying, " I know " ; this is because we cannot 
bring into consciousness the grounds on which to justify 
before our intellects a complete cognitive judgment. 

What in doubtful and conflicting cases will the truly ra- 
tional, the genuinely wise man do ? Will he disregard wholly 
the impulse of feeling and the resulting tendency of will to 
accept the desirable proposition, the longed-for u It-is-so " ? 
By no means. Were this resolve firmly made by every human 
being, it could not be carried into effect. Men will look about 
for evidence to prove what they desire to know as true ; and 
they will know to be true that which it pleases them to have 
true, on less evidence than they require in proof of what the 
affective, the practical, the sesthetical side of human nature 
reacts against. To say this at all is simply to say that the 
soul of man is not a mere intellectual mechanism, and that 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 241 

it never reaches cognition simply by following the process of 
ratiocination. It is to affirm again a true theory of knowl- 
edge, and to take another step toward putting this theory 
in defensible relations to the totality of human life. Nor 
would it accrue to the benefit of the kingdom of knowl- 
edge, if its subjects were to serve with less of warm interest 
and hearty resolve as to the reward of service they are them- 
selves to receive. For in the conquests which this kingdom 
has made, human feeling and human will, enlisted in the 
effort to procure room for settlement upon firm ground of 
rationality, have, as a rule, taken the part of leaders and 
guides. They are oftenest the scouts, the sappers and miners, 
the trumpeters which sound the charge, or the call from sure 
defeat and final discouragement, of the army which extends 
this kingdom. This epistemological truth is not confined to 
matters of conduct and religion alone. It is equally true in 
matters of science and philosophy. We shall subsequently 
show that considerations largely of an affective and quasi- 
practical character not only stimulate the discoveries of 
science, but also enter largely into the very body of scientific 
knowledge. It is enough here to notice that the great leaders 
in the physical and natural sciences have oftenest felt and 
willed their way to the first approaches of truth, and have 
then, so to speak, backed themselves up by searching out 
proofs to justify them before others. 

It must not for a moment be supposed, however, that igno- 
rant and blind feeling, whatever degree of warmth it may 
attain, can raise a belief, or an opinion, to the grade of an 
assured cognition. One would not wisely consult the colored 
" aunty," who " feels in her bones " that every word of the 
Pentateuch came by divine dictation, in order to refute the 
theories of Kuenen and Wellhausen. But even her feelings 
may have no small value in connection with some sort of 
belief, that is capable of being raised, by proof, to the rank 
of a cognitive judgment. For knowledge and faith are not 

16 



242 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

really distinguished after the critical fashion which Kant 
made so disastrous to the integrity of both. Nor is the dis- 
tinction itself, fundamentally considered and as affecting our 
epistemological theory, one that has reference to different 
classes of objects. 

It appears, then, that degrees of knowledge must be recog- 
nized, not only in explanation of the subjective changes which 
mark the approach to an ideal standard, but also as belonging 
to the very nature of all knowledge considered as a growth 
of experience objectively determined. This undoubtedly re- 
quires, in some sort, a doctrine of the " relativity " of all 
knowledge. But it certainly would not be justifiable, at this 
point in our critical examination, to make one grand leap 
over into the domain of dogmatic scepticism or critical 
agnosticism. Even if no such prize as absolute knowledge 
were attainable by man, the other part of the alternative 
would not, as a matter of course, force the conclusion that no 
real knowledge is attainable. For plainly the principle of 
continuity must be used here in the same sensible way in 
which it is used in other similar subjects of inquiry. For 
example, an elm-tree is a plant and not an animal ; but an 
elephant is an animal and not a plant. Thus much may be 
known and affirmed without hesitation. But the elm-tree and 
the elephant are, in several important respects, alike ; and 
there are some beings possessing the most important of 
these respects, common to elm-tree and to elephant, about 
which biology is in doubt as to whether they are plants or 
animals. Between these beings of a doubtful class and 
both elm-tree and elephant, a continuous series of living 
forms can be interposed. In other words, one is not forced 
to deny the important distinctions between certain atti- 
tudes of mind that are plainly cognitions, with all which 
this implies, and certain other attitudes that plainly fall 
short of being cognitions, because one can give no universal 
rule for distinguishing cognitions, or because one finds one's 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 243 

actual cognitions capable of being arranged in varying de- 
grees of approach to a standard which measures them all. 

The illustration just given, however, is not intended to apply 
throughout. For the most important question of all still re- 
quires a brief answer. Is there any experience possible for 
man which actually answers to his own ideal of " absolute 
knowledge " ? To this question one may answer unhesitat- 
ingly, Yes. The completed act of self-consciousness, ending 
in the judgment which affirms my own here-and-now being, 
for myself, is such an absolute cognition. As involving in- 
tellect, feeling, will, all in harmony and, when harmoniously 
employed, reaching an envisage ment of reality that has noth- 
ing more profound, or more complete, or more worthy (except 
the extension of essentially the same cognitive process over 
wider and wider areas), this immediate knowledge of the Self 
by itself is, in actuality, the realized ideal of knowledge. In 
grading other degrees of cognition we employ this ideal as 
our standard. After this pattern alone can we conceive of 
the Divine Mind as a fountain of absolute knowledge. 

As a matter of experience, the possibility is afforded, and 
the actuality proved, of a certain form of absolute knowledge 
by sense-perception also. That my object is there, thus and 
so determined for me, and by me, and yet as not-me, — this, 
too, is a cognitive judgment which has all the characteristics 
belonging to the ideal of absolute knowledge. But how far, 
at this point and henceforward, the knowledge of Things falls 
off from and drops behind the knowledge of Self, has been 
discussed at length in the last chapter. 

In respect of the essential characteristics of knowledge, 
all other forms of cognition have only a relative degree, — 
such as marks their nearness of approach toward an ideal and 
absolute standard. This is true even of the knowledge of 
our own past selves. It is knowledge which, at its best, is 
guaranteed by the act of recognitive memory, and thought 
into consistency with all the other experiences that seem to 



244 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

have a bearing on the truth of the cognitive judgment. At its 
poorest, what appears knowledge of the past is mere unjusti- 
fiable belief or untrustworthy opinion. Back to these firm 
points of standing in our so-called immediate or intuitive 
knowledge of Self and of Things we keep referring all our 
opinions, beliefs, and thoughts, in order to make between the 
latter and the former that rational connection which is called 
" proof." The principles that underlie this process of " mak- 
ing rational connection" await detailed examination. The 
picture gained as the result of exploring the realm of knowl- 
edge, to discover in what respect it admits of degrees, is the 
picture of a changing and developing life of the mind. This 
is true both for the individual and for the race. Human 
beliefs are constantly growing stronger or fading away ; they 
are gathering to themselves, or losing from themselves, the 
light of intellect needed to convert them into cognitions, to 
fit them to become part of the body of human knowledge. 
Thoughts are getting more or less abstract, are flying lower 
or flying higher — 

"In regions mild of calm and serene air, 
Above the smoke and strife of this dim spot, 
Which men call Earth." 

But the lowest of human thoughts must make connection 
with the highest, or sink into the mire ; and the highest of 
human thoughts can soar toward heaven only if they return 
frequently to rest upon the solid grounds of some kind of 
fact. Imaginations constantly run far ahead of known 
truths; but they vanish in the mist unless they prove the 
forerunners of truths to be known, bearing beneath them the 
sustaining limbs of experience and carrying on their backs 
a good load of the choicest ethical and aesthetical interests 
of mankind. Is this, however, a picture to make a brave 
and thoughtful man sit down in the dust of scepticism, or 
stick fast in the quagmire of a hopeless agnosticism? We 
are " of opinion," that it is not. 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 245 

The use of the term " degrees of knowledge," with reference 
to some ideal standard of worth which enables us to rate 
different cognitions as " higher " or " lower " than one 
another, needs little further exposition at this point. It is 
plain that the standard set up is not, in this case, the excel- 
lence of the approach made by any particular cognition, or 
set of cognitions, to some ideal which is itself of a cognitive 
character. The amount and kind of evidence, the strength 
and tenacity of conviction, the motif and firmness of will 
in affirming or rejecting, are all integral parts of the cogni- 
tive process itself. But the claim of different cognitive 
judgments — for example, those of the man of ordinary ex- 
perience, of the scientific man, and of the philosopher, or 
those of the advocates of the supreme importance of conduct, 
or of religion, or of " truth for its own sake " — to stand 
above each other in excellence, must be taken to some court 
of appeal that does not have regard merely to the quality of 
the cognition as such. We have already declared that the 
appeal is made in this case to the value of some kind of ideal 
life. This fact may suffice to indicate the unreasonableness 
of the alternative proclaimed by many writers 1 between per- 
fectly clear, indubitable, and certain knowledge and no knowl- 
edge at all. Such an alternative overlooks the very nature 
of knowledge and the unavoidable conditions of its growth ; 
to carry it out would oblige us to confine the word to the 
immediate deliverances of self-consciousness and sense-per- 
ception. Science would then not be knowledge. And, in- 
deed, all knowledge would be impossible ; for this perfectly 
clear, indubitable, and certain knowledge is itself a matter 
of growth, a prize to stimulate achievement rather than a 
ready-made and completed gift from the hand of Reality. 

Probably no other branch of epistemology has led to so 
much misconception as the inquiry into the Limits of Knowl- 

1 For example, by Mr. Bradley in his " Appearance and Reality," chapter on 
" Degrees of Knowledge." 



246 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

edge. And not a little theoretical confusion, as well as no 
small store of mischief in the practical life, has resulted 
from this misconception. Yet almost all that can be said 
respecting limits to human cognition, so far as the doctrine 
of limits forms a legitimate part of epistemology, lies near 
the surface and may be speedily brought to view. Strictly 
speaking, to describe the limits of human cognition in general 
would require that one should mark out the entire domain 
of all the particular sciences, with the accompanying degrees 
of evidence of various kinds which these sciences possess 
and to which they defer. Such " geographiziug," however, 
would add little or nothing to a philosophical theory of 
knowledge. It would bear about the same relation to our 
higher theoretical interests which the nautical almanac bears 
to new discoveries in the science of navigation. It would 
scarcely have the influence upon the advance of epistemology 
which may be expected for astronomy from the modern use 
of photography in mapping out and numbering the stars. 

The discussion of the limits of knowledge, in order to be 
illumining and fruitful even in the slightest degree, must 
begin and proceed by holding fast to certain distinctions. 
Of these, the first, both in time and in importance, is the 
distinction between the limits of knowledge and the presup- 
positions of knowledge. In some sort, to be sure, the latter 
may be regarded as setting limits to cognition, because they 
do mark out the boundaries within which the entire system 
of human cognitions lies. This amounts to saying that, un- 
less certain conditions are assumed as being fulfilled, no 
knowledge is possible; but that these same conditions, being 
actually met in all the origin and growth of cognition, defin- 
itively settle the bounds within which the rise and progress 
of all human knowledge takes place. 

But now by a strange leap which is, logically considered, 
a paralogism, and, practically considered, a mark of natural 
perversity, these same conditions are spoken of as though 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 247 

they cramped and hindered cognition. A man's skin, as 
marking off the superficial area of the different members of 
his organism in a smooth, continuous way, is the natural 
limit of his body. Inasmuch as it has most important phys- 
iological, nervous, and sesthetical functions, it is an indis- 
pensable condition of the healthy existence, and even of the 
existence at all, of the entire body. But it can scarcely be 
spoken of with propriety as a hindrance to his larger and 
freer development, as a bodily organism ; nor is it desirable 
to attempt the problem of getting " out of one's own skin " 
in order the better to realize what an unlimited extension of 
the human body possibly may be. 

In the case of that knowledge which comes through the 
senses, we use the word " limits " with a possible application 
in both of two directions. Each one of the senses has its 
natural limitations of capacity, fitted to the peculiar function 
which it is intended to perform. Indeed, each sense has a 
number of limits of this kind, that depend upon certain 
subordinate differentiations of its more general functions. 
Further, these limits are variable for different human beings, 
and also for the same human being at different stages of his 
development, or under different circumstances. And yet these 
limits are not indefinitely removable for any individual man 
or for the whole race, so far as our knowledge of the charac- 
teristics of individuals and of the race at present informs us. 
The limits of tones, for example, are those corresponding to 
between 24 and 24,000 vibrations of the stimulus in a second 
of time ; but in individual cases, possibly, between 14 and 
40,000 or 50,000. The limits of colors are for most eyes 
between the deep red and the violet rays ; but for some, the 
still lower red and the ultra-violet rays are visible. Pos- 
sibly, a few eyes can see the halo around the magnet through 
which an electric current is running, although to far the 
greater number there is no halo to be seen. Yet, again, 
have not all, of late, been made to see things, before sup- 



248 DEGREES. LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

posed invisible to all, by the discovery of the Roentgen rays ? 
But, alas ! there are some, on the other hand, who are tone- 
deaf or color-blind ; and who, therefore, having ears, hear 
not, and having eyes, see not — as we who are more favored 
delight to hear and to see. 

Not only is the range of the particular senses limited, 
although thus indefinitely ; but also the number of these 
senses in all may be spoken of as limited, in somewhat similar 
way. Until recently the orthodox supposition in psychology 
held that the special senses of man were in number five, — 
no more and no less ; and we find even that free-lance and 
credulous philosopher, named Schopenhauer, speaking sneer- 
ingly of any assumption that other senses might possibly be 
avenues of cognition for human beings, as of a " sixth sense " 
for bats. But modern investigations have added to the five 
senses formerly admitted several others ; for example, a 
" temperature sense," a " joint sense," and perhaps an outfit 
of " sensations of position " in space through excitation of 
the semi-circular canals, — not to speak of the debatable 
"muscular sense," and the centrally originated sensations 
connected with the cognition of the Self as active and in- 
tensely alive. Nor is it quite admissible for the psychologist 
of fair mind to break off with this enumeration in such man- 
ner as to announce his determination to admit no other 
kinds of " sensation-stuff " (or, to use Kant's shifty expres- 
sion, " that-which-is-given ") as belonging to the domain of 
knowledge through sense. Believers in telepathy, clairvoy- 
ance, necromancy, and all of that ilk, would probably for the 
present most wisely have their claims to enter the clan of the 
" scientists " pronounced' upon as u not proven." For our- 
selves, we do not just now even "half-believe," not to say, 
know that these avenues can bring to the human mind aught 
regarding the Reality which is not-ourselves. But the phe- 
nomena which fall under the various forms of " far sight," 
and u second sight," and extraordinary " insight," are of a 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 249 

character not to allow of an off-hand dogmatic limitation of 
the borders between the sensible and non-sensuous worlds. 
They do show plainly, on the other hand, that these two 
worlds so-called are really one ; the two are capable, there- 
fore, of being bound into the unity of experience through 
that commercio which is the essence of knowledge, in an 
unknown variety of ways. 

Our experience, considered as some sort of a totality de- 
pendent upon racial characteristics and racial development, 
suggests at this point a somewhat startling conjecture. 
There is reason to surmise that the lower animals constantly 
adjust themselves to subtile changes in their environment, 
and carry out in that environment what appears to us a 
system of shrewd plans, through their experience in the form 
of obscure and confused impressions of a sensuous kind. 
They are not, however, aware of themselves or of their ob- 
jects, in all this, in such manner as to entitle the stimu- 
lating and guiding acts of their consciousness to be called 
acts of cognitive perception. Psychology, therefore, speaks 
of such psychoses as instinct, feeling, tact, etc. But human 
cognitive development is to be explained, for individuals 
and for the race, only if recognition is made of a constant 
relation of reciprocal involution and evolution between such 
lower forms of psychoses and genuine states of cognitive 
perception. 

In every series of perceptive acts the grounds of the cogni- 
tive judgment in which the acts terminate, as a matter of fact, 
do not themselves appear in consciousness. In other words, 
what determines the character of the judgment must largely be 
spoken of, in every case, as unrecognized causes rather than 
reasons, or " grounds " in the more appropriate, logical mean- 
ing of the word. Yet the judgment is, on the whole, so 
reached and, when reached, so found possessed of the neces- 
sary characteristics, that the entire process is fully entitled 
to be called an act of cognition. But, on the other hand, 



250 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

the grounds of cognitive judgments, as they consist in char- 
acteristic determinations of the " sensation-stuff," are brought 
more and more clearly into consciousness, as a necessary 
element in the growth of cognition by use of the senses. 
Thus what resembles instinct, blind feeling, and tact is 
constantly being taken up unconsciously into knowledge ; 
and knowledge itself also consists in consciously recognizing 
the presence and significance of a great number of factors 
which, in the case of the lower animals, appear to remain as 
instinct, blind feeling, and tact. 

Now this process of reciprocal involution and evolution, 
which is essential to the growth of perceptive cognition, ren- 
ders it possible that the number of recognized senses pos- 
sessed and intelligently exercised by man may be indefinitely 
increased. And connected with this prospect is the sure 
progress of the physical sciences, helped on by psychology, 
in devising means of knowing what things are by use of these 
newly discovered senses. A generation ago, the scientific 
observer would have been much more disposed to fix rigid 
limits, both quantitative and qualitative, within which all 
things, so far as visible, must be known. But both microscope 
and telescope have extended the limits of seeing the minute 
and the remote far beyond the lines formerly drawn. The 
spectroscope has made vision an apparent avenue for cogni- 
tion of the more interior nature of distant bodies. And not 
only this, as matter of chief surprise ; but all of a sudden, and 
lately, we have had revealed, through use of the eyes, under 
the action of a force which cannot at present be classified 
with any known kind of force, new manifestations of matter 
in hitherto undiscovered relations to the senses of man. How 
many of yet more startling disclosures may not await the 
future of the human race ! Even the discovery is not im- 
possible that men have always used a score or two of senses, 
instead of the five allowed by the traditional psychology ; and 
the future may bring into recognized use, for largely increased 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 251 

knowledge of nature, a score or two more that have been 
hitherto so little used as scarcely to be entitled to the claim to 
exist. 

It should, of course, be said that, after all, our knowledge 
of things through the senses will always be limited. It is 
safe enough to predict that the number of human senses will 
never be indefinitely large; and that the number of distin- 
guishable sensations which rise above the threshold of our 
human consciousness will never reach infinity. Moreover, and 
quite as much a matter of course, all knowledge of this sort 
will be limited to such sides, or aspects, or forms of the 
activity of things as can be known in a sensuous way. In 
reaction, therefore, against this limitation, from which no 
reasonable or even conceivable means of escape suggests itself 
in our case, it is customary to form the picture of beings that 
cognize things in other and preferable ways. Even Kant, as 
a kind of subjective correlate to his Ding-an-sich, admitted 
the possibility of an intuition which should be non-sensuous ; 
and this intuition, by escaping the limitations of all sense- 
intuition, might furnish an immediate envisagement of the 
nature of Reality itself. 

At once, however, we are moved to inquire : Whence comes 
this dissatisfaction with the seeming exterior character and 
the irremovable limits of the human knowledge of things ? To 
this inquiry our discussions have already provided the prompt 
and incontestably true answer. The dissatisfaction arises 
from the innermost cognitive nature of man. But whence 
comes the fair picture of a possible kind of knowledge which 
shall, at least in great measure, remove the dissatisfaction, — 
a kind of knowledge that shall not leave things still external 
to us and leave us feeling shut off from the true nature of 
things ? To this inquiry also, the prompt and incontestably 
true answer has already been furnished : It comes from the 
depths of man's rational experience with himself. It is the 
picture of a being that shall be so constituted as to know things, 



252 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

perchance to know all things, as man knows himself. For the 
Self is known with an intuition which, so far as it goes, 
both furnishes and guarantees the correspondence of the 
object of cognition with the reality cognized. But things, 
as to their nature beyond the negative definition of a being- 
not-me, are only analogically known. It is the recognition 
of this fundamental difference and the conception of a being 
that shall transcend this difference by having an experience 
which gives the cognition of things to the Self, after the man- 
ner in which the cognition of Self is given to us, that leads 
men to speak of irremovable limits to human knowledge by 
the senses. 

It is more usual to discourse of the " limits " of scientific 
knowledge in a meaning quite different from the foregoing. 
" Science " is supposed to be knowledge par excellence, the 
only cognition which will bear the tests that are necessary to 
separate between the genuine, trustworthy metal and the 
baser admixtures of opinion, belief, and mere abstractions. 
But those who have most confidence in the validity of all 
truly scientific knowledge, and most pride in its recent rapid 
advances, are readiest to admit that its achievements hitherto 
have compassed no appreciable percentage of what remains 
yet for science to do. Its field is, therefore, thought of as 
narrow and limited in comparison with the extent of nature 
at large, regarded as a possible object for scientific research 
and scientific discovery. Now, science lays emphasis on that 
knowledge which has taken the form of the universal, in dis- 
tinction from the particulars of individual acts of cognition, 
whether of things or of Self. Science is knowledge of the 
generic characteristics of large numbers of individuals and of 
general laws, or of the uniform modes of the behavior of 
the individuals under certain definitively fixed relations to 
each other. 

It is admitted, however, that in order to have a system of 
judgments which states the characteristics and laws of things 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 253 

and which may be considered as scientific knowledge, the 
grounds of connection must be made more or less clear and 
defensible between this system of conceptual judgments 
and those cognitive judgments which are terminals of the 
particular processes of perception and of self-consciousness. 
The bearing of such a connection upon our view of the validity 
and extent of human knowledge will become evident through 
subsequent discussions from somewhat altered points of view. 
From the present point of view it appears simply that the case 
of that conceptual knowledge at which science aims is not, 
so far as the application of the word " limits " is concerned, 
markedly different from the case of perception through the 
senses. The range of what is already known appears, in fact, 
exceedingly small in comparison with the conjectured extent 
of what may possibly yet be known. In fact, also, the amount 
of that which is known constantly increases. But since first- 
hand evidence in the form of immediate cognitive judgments 
must somewhere be furnished, or else our so-called science 
lacks a sure ground of standing in reality and becomes mere 
thinking and imagining rather than assured knowledge, the 
limits of sense-perception set certain limits to the science of 
things. 

Here emerges, however, a very important difference between 
scientific knowledge and immediate cognition through the 
senses. Science is not content with knowing enough about 
things simply to use them cunningly. It aims at explaining 
things. As has already been said, it claims to state its cogni- 
tions in a system of judgments about universals, — about hinds 
of things and about the laivs of their behavior in manifold re- 
lations. Now the knowledge of facts, even when of the clearest 
and surest, by no means carries with it the knowledge of the 
explanation of the same facts. And men are constantly find- 
ing out that the most frequent and familiar of facts, as 
cognitively apprehended, become the most complicated and 
mysterious when an explanation of them is demanded. To 



254 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

know " that," and a little of " what," is not to know all of 
what or any of " why." It is no wonder, then, that the limits 
of scientific knowledge, although actually widening, seem to 
be growing narrower in comparison with the boundless extent 
of the scientifically knowable that is as yet unknown. Thus 
we may, on the one hand, contemplate the fair prospect of 
more rapid advance for the particular sciences in the future 
than has been at any time in the past history of the race. 
We may even expect the fulfilment of those aspirations 
which, in germinal form, led Paracelsus to declare : — 

' ' Thus I possess 
Two sorts of knowledge ; one, — vast, shadowy, 
Hints of the unbounded aim I once pursued : 
The other consists of many secrets, — caught 
While bent on nobler prize, — perhaps a few 
Prime principles which may conduct to much." 

And should this increased knowledge of facts and causes be 
followed by a corresponding growth of skill and art, then dia- 
monds may be turned out (no longer mere black pin-heads) 
from crucibles filled a few hours ago with charcoal ; and 
this charcoal itself may be no longer needed for fuel in an 
age when the atmosphere yields freely its thermo-dynamic 
resources. 

On the other hand, this expected realization of the Tales of 
the Arabian Nights, under the improved moral restrictions 
of modern civilization, will itself be a limited affair. There 
will still remain — so we are accustomed to say in mocking 
self-pity or in childish complaint — the infinite ocean of undis- 
covered truth ; and the greatest men in science will still be 
little children gathering a few pebbles upon the shore. How 
rarely is it remembered that, by this manner of looking at the 
intellect of man and at the nature of the Reality with which 
he supposes himself to hold commerce of an intellectual kind, 
assumptions are being justified that reach even beyond those 
for which science is wont to rebuke the theologian or the meta- 
physician of the most dogmatic type ! 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 255 

As every student of the problem and history of episte- 
mology knows perfectly well, the question of limits presents 
itself in a yet more trying and dangerous form to our critical 
thinking. In Kant's celebrated chapter, " On the Ground of 
the Distinction of Objects in general into Phenomena and 
Noumena " he compares the whole domain of " pure under- 
standing" to an island "enclosed by nature itself within 
limits that can never be changed." "A wide and stormy 
ocean," full of fog-banks and of ice, surrounds this island ; it 
is "the home of illusion," but the island is the country of 
truth. If now we inquire of this critical explorer, who has 
just surveyed the entire island and laid it out with his ana- 
lytic spade after the fashion of a French garden in the last 
century, what constitutes the unchangeable and hopelessly 
fixed limits, the reply is somewhat remarkable. The " limits " 
are the constitution of the island itself. But one might reason- 
ably expect to be told the rather : The limits are the sur- 
rounding u wide and stormy ocean." And, indeed, upon this 
same ocean Kant, the great explorer, bravely sets sail with 
the four tables of the categories for his chart, and the interests 
of a faith which is to take the place of knowledge, when the 
latter has been " removed," lying heavy on his heart. Thus 
guided and ballasted, as it were, he discovers in the entire 
exploitable extent of this ocean three will-o'-the-wisp ideas, 
which, although they are not even to be spoken of as stars, 
descried from the island through the ocean's mist, and set 
there by the good God to guide aright poor mariners, must 
nevertheless be followed and believed in as real ; and so, if 
followed, they will lead to the practical faith which reposes 
content within a recognized illusion as its " fictive " haven. 

But perhaps sufficient fault has already been found with the 
" Critique of Pure Reason " for its off-hand identification of the 
presuppositions of all cognition — especially those of a for- 
mal sort — with limits or barriers that mark off and exclude 
cognition from the world of the trans-subjective. The exam- 



256 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

ination given hitherto to the nature of knowledge has cer- 
tainly not justified a premature confidence in warrants for 
this leap into agnosticism. To refute it further, and to con- 
firm a mature confidence in more positive and reassuring 
conclusions, requires no little of remaining critical work. 
The supposition that human knowledge cannot sufficiently 
commend and enforce its own ontological implicates must 
lead to the inquiry as to what these implicates are, and as 
to the terms on which they are given to the intellect for its 
acceptance or rejection. The denial of the power of experi- 
ence to transcend its own limits must be met with a pro- 
founder examination of the concept of experience, with a view 
to see whether aught that is so self-limited corresponds to 
our actual experience. When scepticism and agnosticism 
challenge our cognition to recognize its limits, it is time to 
send the challenge back, and to inquire what are the neces- 
sary limits of scepticism and of agnosticism. And, finally, 
the very doctrine of the " relativity of all knowledge " irresis- 
tibly brings on the inquiry whether this term, too, does not 
also imply the absolute nature of some human knowledge. 

Only when these and kindred discussions have been con- 
ducted to an issue in an unavoidable agnosticism can we con- 
sent to consider favorably the merits of a doctrine which 
speaks of knowledge as though its presuppositions, and even 
its necessary objective implicates, could properly be turned 
into fixed barriers of human mental activity. There is quite 
too much apriorism to suit a genuinely critical student of the 
epistemological problem in the off-hand assumption that the 
so-called " categories " are hindrances to a cognition of Reality, 
rather than forms of its truthful mental representation. 

Meantime, the preliminary truth which has. been derived 
from previous discussions may be stated in the form of a cau- 
tion : Transcendent entities and principles, made use of in the 
interests of explaining experience in general, must be derived 
from a basis of concrete experiences with acknowledged actual- 



^ DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 257 

ities. Here the relation of content and form, of substantial 
existence and mode of mental procedure, is such that the two 
cannot be considered or criticised apart. The universal mode 
of mental procedure by which we explicate the transcendent 
that is implicate in our experience is a movement of cognitive 
judgments under the principle known as " sufficient reason." 
Whenever, then, a connection of judgments established in this 
way leads us beyond the limits of individual experiences, the 
advance thus gained carries with it the content that is impli- 
cate in the form. This is a genuine advance of knowledge, 
as distinguished from an endless wandering over "the wide 
and stormy ocean " of illusion, in the vain attempt to convert 
mere imaginings and abstractions into content of truth, — 
after the fashion described in the Kantian "transcendental 
dialectic. ,, 

Any discussion of the Kinds of Knowledge, from the epis- 
temological point of view and with the intention to make the 
discussion yield fruit for the science of epistemology, must 
constantly regard two very simple practical rules : The dif- 
ferent species distinguished must all belong to the one genus, 
— namely, knowledge ; and the principles of division accord- 
ing4o which it is proposed to break up this genus into species 
must be intelligently chosen and consistently maintained. 

In violation of the first rule, Schopenhauer, after berating 
Kant soundly (and, indeed, not without a show of reasons) 
for exalting conceptual above perceptual knowledge, proceeds 
himself to reverse the positions of the two so as virtually, by 
some of his expressions, to deprive the former of all claim 
to be called " knowledge." Indeed, it would seem to be by a 
kind of non-sensaous intuition, such as Kant thought super- 
human beings alone could possess, that Schopenhauer arrives 
at the cognition of the essence of Tliing-in-itself as " Will." 
But how can one speak of kinds and degrees of knowing 
without admitting that, considered as to its essential charac- 
teristics, there is only one kind of knowledge ? " Kinds " — 

17 



258 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

in this case, as in every other case — are only subordinate 
species of the one genus or kind. What the essential marks 
of this genus are, what is the genuine concept of knowledge, 
has surely been discussed at sufficient length. The discussion 
has shown that perception and intuition, without thinking, 
never amount to cognition; but also that mere conceiving, 
mere judging, and especially abstracting from all content of a 
quasi-intuitive sort, can neither impart nor advance knowl- 
edge. So that when cognition by intuition or envisagement 
and cognition by abstraction and thought fall into a quarrel 
over the question which of the two is entitled to stand highest 
along the scale of surety or of worth, they are obliged in good 
earnest to admit each other's claims, or they cannot rationally 
even begin the quarrel. The same thought arises when men 
of science are heard depreciating men of practical or artistic 
insight, or the reverse ; and when men of firm faith denounce 
the rationalism of those who do not reason as they do, or men 
of active intellects decry the credulity of those whose belief 
differs from their own. For cognition itself is impossible with- 
out both insight and argument ; and all men must both believe 
and think in order to Jcnoiv at all. 

If, however, the fundamental facts as to the nature of cog- 
nition are borne constantly in mind, several different divisions 
of cognition may be made, according to different points of 
view and changing principles of division. One of the most 
important of these attempts at classification distinguishes the 
pure — often called a priori — kind of knowledge from that 
which is empirical, — sometimes called a posteriori. Of the 
former, the science of mathematics is the accepted type ; and 
other kinds of knowledge stand, in the scale of purity, nearer 
to or more remote from the type, according to the degrees of 
their approach to mathematics in the character of their rea- 
soning and in the certainty of their conclusions. This entire 
distinction, however, is usually carried out in a manner to 
contradict or obscure a true philosophical doctrine of knowl- 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 259 

edge. For just so far as mathematics and the so-called math- 
ematical sciences constitute a body of cognitions, and not a 
mere system of abstractions, they are built up as are all struc- 
tures of a cognitive kind ; that is to say, they consist of a 
number of connected judgments, which have their source and 
their verification in a trustworthy commerce of mind with 
really existent things. The view which regards mathematics 
and the mathematical sciences as a sort of sensuous trans- 
cript or copy of ready-made things, regarded as standing in 
extra-mental relations to one another, and the view which 
regards them as purely thought-constructions, having no need 
of concrete self-consciousness or of perceptions by the senses, 
are both equally untenable. Like all other cognitions, these 
also are developed by the application of thought to our con- 
crete experiences with ourselves and with things. And the 
moment mathematical conceptions wander away from the 
path in which they can make valid connection with these 
concrete experiences, they cease to be cognitive in any defen- 
sible meaning of that term. 

One of the most valuable of the subordinate truths taught 
by Kant in the " Critique of Pure Reason " is the necessity of 
finding the source and verification for all our mathematical 
knowledge in what he considers a priori activity of the con- 
structive and synthetic imagination. If one wants to know 
what a straight line actually is, then one must draw it, by an 
act of constructive imagination. But Kant does not empha- 
size the truth that such drawing of a straight line is quite 
impossible for a mind that has not previously traced some 
line, as seen or felt, actually limiting a thing perceived by the 
senses. That is to say, the grounds for the conception of a 
straight line, on which the foundations of all mathematics of 
the geometrical order and all the mathematical sciences them- 
selves are standing, are given only in the cognitive judgment 
which terminates a series of sense-perceptions. This process 
is an envisagement by thinking mind of the nature of the 



260 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

really existent as given to it in the object of sense-percep- 
tion. What is true of those processes that constitute the 
actual experiences in which we come to the knowledge of the 
properties of a straight line, is true of all the experience which 
furnishes all the other primary conceptions and axioms of 
geometry. As a science, a system of cognitions, it is not a 
mere product of imagination or of thought, much less of 
mere aggregated sensations or of associated ideas. It is 
rather a product of the entire mind in its actual, living com- 
merce with things. 

Whenever Kant discusses the nature and origin of those 
cognitive judgments which make up the science of arithmetic, 
the other of the only two divisions of mathematics, he is more 
than ordinarily unsatisfactory in his account of their episte- 
mological character. Arithmetic is, in fact, from beginning 
to end, nothing but counting. The activity of the mind in 
the cognitive processes which enter into counting is, however, 
exceedingly complex. It involves all the intellectual powers ; 
it both promotes and implies the development of time-con- 
sciousness ; it involves recognitive memory and self-conscious- 
ness. As applied to Things instead of the successive states of 
the Self, counting can at first be done only in connection with 
and in dependence upon successive acts of the concrete cog- 
nition of things through the senses. All the science of num- 
bers, as well as the science of space relations, has its sure 
foundations, as science (as knowledge and not mere imagin- 
ings, or thoughts, or beliefs), in that commerce with Reality 
which all men have through actual, concrete sense-perceptions. 

What, however, shall be said of the claims of that mighty 
and towering superstructure of mathematics, rising higher 
and still higher with speculations so sublimated that only a 
handful of initiated priests can even discern the meaning of 
its mysteries, but which often makes claims to be a temple of 
knowledge par excellence? In answering this question, one 
must remain faithful to a critical epistemology, neither hiding 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 261 

anything of truth by interposing the agnostic doubt, nor set- 
ting down to the credit of mathematics admissions which 
would annul all true conceptions of the nature of knowledge. 
The truth lies in the middle path. Mathematics can increase 
human knowledge, both in the number of its true judgments 
and in the degree of clearly discernible evidence on which 
they are consciously made to repose. But mathematical rea- 
soning alone can never furnish us with truth ; because it can 
never, of itself as it were, amount to genuine cognition. So 
far as the system of judgments which it develops can connect 
themselves with the known nature and actual relations of real 
things, this system forms a part of the explanatory science of 
things. But so far as it cannot make this connection, the 
clearness and cogency of the arrangements which it produces 
between its own abstractions give it no claim to be called a 
form of " knowledge." 

Here we may fitly raise again the question touched upon in 
a preceding chapter (pp. 143 f.). What do I really know when 
I affirm as true some relation of mathematical symbols which 
I have reached as the result of days of hard work and pages 
of figuring and plotting of curves ? Not necessarily more than 
this : namely, that, starting from certain assumptions of 
abstract relations between mere concepts, I have argued, in 
accordance with accepted mathematical rules, to the conclu- 
sion of certain similar relations between even more abstract 
concepts. Thus much is true ; and I know it to be true. But 
the instant I propose to apply this process of argument, or its 
assumptions, or its conclusion, to any actually existent rela- 
tions between real beings, I am met by the prior question : 
44 How do you know that the nature of real beings admits of 
their entering into these peculiar mathematical relations ? " 
And even if the assumptions, in which the argumentative 
start began, were known to be applicable to things, it by no 
means follows that the calculated extensions of those rela- 
tions admit of such an application. For things may not be 



262 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

constructed mathematically all the way through (" according 
tb Bsblid," or " to Gunter," as we might say). Indeed, 
things do not appear to be mathematical throughout. And 
there is probably no greater or more mischievous fallacy 
current in scientific circles at the present time than that of 
supposing that a knowledge of reality, or indeed any real 
extension of knowledge, can come chiefly in this way. How 
the failure to observe the difference between mathematical 
abstractions and the reality of things has led to vain puzzles 
and to important errors, from the conundrum about Achilles 
and the tortoise down to the antinomies of Kant, we shall 
consider elsewhere. 

Some light is thrown upon the epistemological problem by 
considering the effect of distinctions in time as present, past, 
and future, upon the resulting kinds of knowledge. Undoubt- 
edly memory and inference are necessary to the cognition of 
what appears, in time, as present matter-of-fact. Indeed it 
has been seen that memory and thinking necessarily enter 
into all cognitive processes. But the knowledge of the object 
here-and-now present, whether that object be the Self or some 
Thing, differs from the knowledge of the same object by an act 
of recognitive memory. Experimental investigation of the 
laws which govern the fading of the memory image, and abun- 
dant experience with errors of memory, combine to show that, 
as respects its surety, cognition by memory is inferior to the 
immediate cognition of self-consciousness and of sense-percep- 
tion. It is, however, primarily with regard to the intensity of 
belief in the reality of the object cognized that the difference 
is noticeable. Not infrequently the cognitive judgment is 
more discriminating when it is based upon memory than 
when based upon the process known as immediate intuition. 
Sources of error which arise in the affective consciousness 
generally account for this. On the other hand, the fallibility 
of memory is as much a commonplace as are the errors of 
sense or the foibles of self-knowledge. 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 263 

It is not in these subjective conditions alone, however, that 
our superior confidence in present cognition is based. As we 
project ourselves backward in time by an act of imagination, 
we do not feel so sure that things themselves were not mark- 
edly different in the past from what we now know them to be. 
Nor does our own cherished and well-remembered Self escape 
wholly from this doubt. Do I remember how I thought, felt, 
and planned — what manner of one I was — in childhood or 
in infancy, so that I can affirm knowledge on the basis of this 
memory, even when I have apparent memory to bring for- 
ward in proof ? All men, therefore, think it right to bolster 
up even the clearest recognitive memories of what was, 
especially if the time concerned was remote, by arguing as 
to what must have been. Thus opinions of memory are helped 
up to the rank of cognitions by the arm of rational inference. 
The individual fact is thus certified to by an appeal to its 
connection with the universal in experience. Yet, again, 
the most assured scientific knowledge of things suffers from 
the weakening effect of long stretches of time. Scientific 
knowledge is, by nature, universal and so avowedly inde- 
pendent of time. But he would be too bold a teacher of 
science who should be just as sure of any principle when 
applied to the physical realities of countless ages ago as when 
applied to the system of things known to be existent to-day. 
This certainly looks — does it not ? — as though the so-called 
" system of things " might really be a Life, changing its modes 
of manifestation or self-realization in accordance with imma- 
nent Ideas, rather than a collection of rigid entities, blindly 
subject in a mechanical way to unchanging laws. 

In answer to the inquiry whether knowledge of the future 
is possible, a negative reply rises most readily to one's lips. 
But it cannot be admitted that the future is wholly unknow- 
able without virtually destroying the foundations of all knowl- 
edge. Indeed, all practical cognition, or all cognition put to 
use in any way, implies the right and the power to predict. 



264 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

As a mechanical engineer, after a thorough examination, I 
may affirm, " I know the bridge is safe." The judgment, 
" the bridge is safe," implies the prediction, " This same 
bridge will not, the next instant, fall of its own weight." But 
is it not, after all, possible that the bridge may go down ; and 
do I surely know that it will not ? Now if one answers this 
question by saying that, "abstractly considered," such a 
catastrophe is possible, the retort follows that the question 
does not concern abstract considerations, but concerns rather 
the grounds of the possible cognition of what will actually be. 
And if it is further said that, perchance, some error has crept 
into the calculations, and therefore the bridge may fall, then 
the reply is that such error vitiates the declaration, " The 
bridge is safe," and converts it into a judgment of opinion, 
instead of a truly cognitive judgment. 

Even in the case of a judgment declarative of a fact of per- 
ception, an implied reference to the future validity of the 
judgment, if it is truly cognitive, cannot be avoided. u The 
snow is white ; but the clothing of the man standing upon the 
snow is black." Such a statement, in order to lay claim for 
recognition as knowledge, must imply something more than a 
merely subjective connection of forms of mental representa- 
tion. It is understood to imply an objective connection main- 
taining itself between the " momenta " and relations of really 
existent beings: It follows that the judgment must bear 
examination in order to be true; it must have enough of 
stability in. the world of things to repeat itself in my mind 
and in the minds of others. If now, when I look again, 
the snow is no longer white and the clothing of the man 
standing upon the snow is no longer black, why, then the 
former judgment was not cognitive — unless, indeed, the 
color of the snow and of the clothing has somehow been 
changed. But this very demand for a " reason " why the 
former judgment should not be withdrawn as erroneous, or 
else the present change in judgment must be justified by an 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 265 

appeal to some new grounds, shows the nature of the relation 
between cognition in general and the distinctions of time. 
Knowledge resting on grounds that cannot change is knowl- 
edge once for all ; it is timeless cognition, and must imply 
knowledge of the future as well as of the present and of the 
past. But without some conscious recognition of grounds — 
at least, hurriedly gathered and scanned, although perhaps 
scarcely to be called " consciously recognized," after all — no 
cognitive judgment can be laid down. And, as has been al- 
ready pointed out, the more conceptual and scientific cog- 
nition becomes, the more independent it becomes of the 
gnawing tooth of time. Scientific knowledge is of the uni- 
versal ; science boasts its power assuredly to predict and to 
lay down truths that are independent of time. 

And yet this claim of science to an established character, 
and this boast of the power to extend itself into the indefinite 
future, can by no means be made wholly good. For we are 
only relatively sure of the unchanging truth of our most firmly 
established scientific generalizations. The whole system of 
things physical may possibly be completely upset to-morrow, 
— " possibly" with an abstract possibility. But if one cannot 
say one knows it actually will not be, one cannot claim an 
absolute certitude for any system of scientific cognitions. 
Here it is exceedingly important to notice that any doubt or 
agnosticism which may afflict the mind does not refer to the 
possibility of the laws of our intellects undergoing an im- 
portant change. Neither is it due to a recognition of the 
Kantian claim that human knowledge does not reach to 
noumena, or to thing s-in-themselves. The rather is it because 
men are sure they know Reality well enough to engender 
reasonable doubt as to how far its self-imposed limits to 
change may possibly extend. In other words, we know 
noumena, or thing s-in-themselves, " too well " to trust them 
indefinitely to confine themselves according to our rules as 
to the way they absolutely must change in the future. But it 



266 DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 

is just this very independence of human wills which things 
display that makes them known to human minds as realities 
indeed. 

Once more, then, by an indirect and circuitous path we 
reach the discussion of certain questions left over in the very 
distinction of knowledge from other kinds of conscious states. 
Now we may the better inquire as to the significance of the 
contention of Schopenhauer : " The given material of every 
philosophy " (of all cognition in actuality, and so of all theo- 
retical discussion of the problem of cognition) " is accordingly 
nothing else than the empirical consciousness, which di- 
vides itself into the consciousness of one's own self and the 
consciousness of other things." 1 Conceptual knowledge, how- 
ever, is the elaboration of this so-called empirical conscious- 
ness, in such manner as to interpret and expand its 
deliverances for the formation of a system of truths that 
shall have a claim to represent the system of really existent 
beings, the Unity of the World. But in some sort, the most 
fundamental categories of Identity and Difference, of Process 
and Change, of Relation and Causation, are one thing as 
applied to Self and another thing when applied to physical 
beings and physical transactions. Thus it is not the necessity 
of logical determination, but the understanding of actuality, 
which gives the law and the goal to our higher cognitions. 

Thought is subject to logical necessity : oftener than not, 
perhaps, actuality is what it is as a fact ; and that is the last 
word on the subject. The actual points of starting for the 
logical development of concepts of experience lies just where 
the beginnings of experience itself lie — in the discriminat- 
ing and integrating activity of mind, having commerce with 
particular and concrete things. But logical thinking changes 
these objects of self-consciousness and of sense-perception, 
according to certain points of view, often arbitrarily chosen, 
into logically differentiated objects of thought. These logical 

i The World as Will and Idea, ii. pp. 258 f. 



DEGREES, LIMITS, AND KINDS, OF KNOWLEDGE 267 

entities it places in manifold relations to one another, under 
terms of " classes," " laws," etc. Especially does it seek for, 
and imagine that it finds, the formulas to express the causal 
action of the beings which belong to these different classes 
and stand under these different laws, one upon another, in 
most manifold ways. If science becomes especially self-con- 
fident and enthusiastic, it converts some of its most abstract 
generalizations into primary realities and affirms an assured 
knowledge of their inmost and unchanging character. For 
example : Energy may be conceived of as an entity that can be 
stored and transferred, conserved and correlated ; the law of 
its storages and transferences, its conservation and correla- 
tion, may be announced as having universal and unbroken 
sway over things. This is, however, for science only a con- 
venient abstraction ; it belongs to philosophy to tell what that 
actually is can answer to this term. 

The right to extend knowledge in this way — or, rather, the 
right to convert a system of logically related conceptions into 
a system of true cognitions, of judgments affirming laws in 
reality — may well be questioned further at this point. This 
question will lead us to consider, on the one hand, the funda- 
mental and irrefragable modes of the functioning of intellect, 
and, on the other hand, the criticism of those ontological 
implicates on the basis of which we identify the modes of 
thought with the modes of the really existent. 



CHAPTER IX 

IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 

THE sphere of experience is larger than the sphere of 
knowledge ; but the sphere of knowledge is too large 
to be completely compassed and, having been mapped out, 
assigned in fee simple as the domain of thinking faculty so- 
called. We have, therefore, narrowed our problem greatly 
and denned its limits, when for the present we inquire : What 
are the principles which validate and explain — so far as 
validating and explanation are possible — the functions of 
thought in all human cognition ? But this inquiry, as it is 
proposed to the serious student of epistemology, is something 
very different from the question which logic may propound in 
nearly the same terms. The logician's point of view is one 
from which no anxiety need be felt as to the answer obtained, 
and at which no insight is gained into the deeper, ontological 
import of the result. For what does formal logic care as to 
the truthfulness of thought, in the fundamental and incom- 
parably most important meaning of this word ? Logic under- 
takes to show either how men actually do reason, or how they 
may so reason as to convince those who hold by the common 
axioms or postulates, — whether they are sceptics, dogmatists, 
or agnostics, in their theory of knowledge. But epistemology 
must, by pushing its rights of presuppositionless criticism to 
their utmost possible limits, ascertain what is the final import 
of the first principles of all thinking, and how far they seem 
to carry in themselves, or otherwise to derive, their claim to 
apply to the trans-subjective. 



IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 269 

In the interests of gratifying that passion for unity which 
human reason so persistently displays, as well as (one can 
scarcely fail to suspect) in the effort to be original and to 
announce some startling new discovery, the principles of all 
thinking, as these principles enter into and conditionate all 
knowledge, have often been reduced to a single formula. Such 
a reduction has, however, never stood the test of an appeal to 
our actual cognitive experience. At this point let us wait a 
moment in reflection upon what the epistemological problem 
really is. It is the problem of the possibility of genuine cog- 
nition. But genuine cognition is impossible without thinking ; 
it is dependent, therefore, upon the actual use of the princi- 
ples of thinking. The constitutional forms of the functioning 
of human intellect are the necessary presuppositions of all 
human cognition. Yet again, cognition is not genuine, unless 
the mental process terminates in an objective judgment, in a 
form of psychic synthesis which carries with itself the claim 
of a valid trans-subjective reference. 1 To say, therefore, that 
the possibility of actual cognition depends upon the truth of 
cognition amounts to the claim that the validity of all knowl- 
edge implies the right to give to the fundamental principles of 
human thinking a trans-subjective reference. So far forth, the 
principles of Reality not-my-Self and the principles of my think- 
ing must be the same. The temptation is accordingly very 
great to seize upon some logical formula and convert it into 
the one all-comprehensive, all-illumining, and all-supporting 
principle of both Self and Things. To this temptation Fichte 
and Schelling yielded ; Hegel also in his great work on Logic, 
although in far less complete and disastrous form. But the fact 
and the character of the growth of knowledge, through think- 
ing, itself demonstrates that Eeality is no such simple affair. 
It is not to be thus summarily known as the objectification 

1 Nothing could well go wider of the mark, or wound philosophy in a more 
sensitive and fatal place, than the random statement of Paulsen (" Introduction to 
Philosophy/' p. 353): "No theory of knowledge causes the slightest change in 
the stock and value of our knowledge." 



270 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 

of the logical principle of Identity, or of the syllogistic Pro- 
cess by which the human mind climbs, through stages of par- 
tial error and half-truth, to the heights of the Idea. On the 
other hand, we repeat : No explanation or validating of cog- 
nition is possible, except upon the presupposition that the 
fundamental principles of my thinking are applicable to the 
trans-subjective Reality. 

Many centuries of reflective thinking upon the formal prin- 
ciples of thought have reduced these principles to two ; they 
are, the " Principle of Identity and Non-contradiction," and 
the " Principle of Sufficient Reason." This result may well 
enough be accepted as its own warrant. There is, therefore, 
no one principle of thought which can be claimed as the only 
source and guaranty of cognition. But there are two princi- 
ples, both of which are fundamental (although, it may well be, 
in different ways), neither of which is deducible from the 
other, and both of which must co-operate, in order that ob- 
jective cognition may result. Both of these principles must 
also somehow obtain a guaranty for application to the world 
of the really existent, both of selves and of things, or else all 
human knowledge goes without explanation, import, or war- 
rant of any kind. 

It has been shown that thinking, so far as it enters into 
cognition as a necessary constitutive factor, takes the form of 
judging ; and that this cognitive judgment must itself be a 
conscious, selective, feeling-full, and believing activity of mind. 
It has also been shown how, although the greater part of 
experience lies below the threshold of consciousness, and no 
little logical or formally correct elaboration of experience is 
possible without the consciousness of the reasons which jus- 
tify it, yet so far as growth of knowledge is itself to be spoken 
of, such growth consists in the conscious, selective, feeling- 
full, and believing connection of judgments with one another 
as " consequents " and " grounds." " I know this," or " This 
is so and so," — such is the intellectual form given to a com- 



IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 271 

pleted act of cognition. It is, therefore, a judgment. " I 
know this, because I know that," or, " This is so, because that 
is so," — such is the intellectual form of the conscious progress 
from cognition to cognition. The knowledge of the connec- 
tion is itself a new and most valuable cognition. It is called 
reasoning, or a conscious connecting of judgments with other 
judgments, as finding in the latter the supporting " reasons " or 
so-called logical " grounds " of the former. Xow the " Prin- 
ciple of Identity and Non-contradiction " is the necessary form 
of every cognitive judgment. And the so-called " Principle 
of Sufficient Reason " is the necessary form of every cognitive 
connection of judgments, or process of the logical growth of 
knowledge. The rather must we say that the former is 
nothing else than the Self's full recognition of its own ut- 
terly presuppositionless and inexplicable, but unquestionable 
form of procedure in judging; and the latter principle sustains 
the same relation to the Self's procedure in all reasoning. It 
will quickly appear, however, that the discussion of this prin- 
ciple from the point of view of a critical philosophy of knowl- 
edge leads out into the vision of that broader and grander 
ontological discussion which metaphysics and the philosophy 
of religion require. How significant the perpetual recur- 
rence of this fact in every topic assigned to the student of 
epistemology ! 

It is customary for treatises in Logic to throw the Principle 
of Identity into some such form as the following: Ada A; 
and A is not, and cannot possibly be, non-A. This is true 
whatever be meant by A ; and, indeed, whether any reality 
be meant by it or not. Now it is at once plain that this 
principle, as thus stated, cannot properly be made a subject 
of argument ; nor can it, strictly speaking, be formally stated 
without implying it several times over in the very simplest 
form of statement. For if I do not hold fast to the judg- 
ment, or belief, — call it what one will, — that the A of the 
subject is A, I cannot affirm that it is identical with the A of 



272 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 

the predicate; neither can I negate its identity with the 
non-A which forms the predicate when the principle of non- 
contradiction is stated. The same thing is true of the A of 
the predicate. And since in all actual and earnest work of 
judging, some definite relation between subject and predicate 
is affirmed or denied by the copula, the principle of identity 
must be assumed as applicable in some sort also to the copula. 
But, further, if I attempt to state my confidence in the iden- 
tity with itself of either the subject- A or the predicate- A, 
I can only state this confidence in the form of a judgment. 
Thus subject- A is subject- A ; and predicate- A is predicate- A 
And now I am ready to go the? whole thing over again from 
the very beginning. The principle of identity in formal logic 
appears, then, to be nothing but an abstract statement for 
the presuppositionless form of intellectual functioning in 
every act of judgment. 

But consider, further, that if this logical formula is pressed 
to give a full account of its own meaning and of its claims to 
indisputable authority, it is speedily plunged into the most 
distressing condition of doubt. And then critical episte- 
mology appears as mocking, with an issue that leads to a kind 
of demoniacal laughter, her twin sister, formal and uncritical 
logic. This is the fate which the dogmatic assertion of infal- 
libility, even of the most abstract, formal, and worthless sort, 
customarily receives at the hands of the sceptic. Nor are we 
merely jesting, or displaying an insane fondness for picking 
flaws in the foundations of truth, when we call attention to 
the following puzzle : A is not A, and no A can ever be 
known as throughout = A, For the A which is the subject is 
not wholly identical with the A that is the predicate ; it differs 
from it, at least, in being subject, whereas the latter is known 
as being predicate. And if I try to affirm the complete iden- 
tity of the subject- A with itself, I find myself hopelessly 
baffled. For in some respects, as first posited, it differs from 
itself as posited the second time ; and then, as has already 



IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 273 

been seen, the positing of the first-posited subject-^, as iden- 
tical with itself, can never be made otherwise than in the 
form of a judgment. And so we have to go over the whole 
process in confirmation of the principle, from the very begin- 
ning; but only to end in the same hard necessity at last. 
Surely, this is a worse and more hopeless task than that 
given to Sisyphus. 

This crude mixture of sport and critical work with the 
principle of identity may as well be made at once to teach 
certain truths of no little importance. Criticism cannot ex- 
pound, without implicating in the very process, the presuppo- 
sitionless principles of thinking itself. And it appears that 
however we may see fit to express this particular principle, it 
belongs to the class of presuppositionless principles. It ap- 
pears also that the principle of identity is not merely the 
logical and formal, but the actual and vital, principle of the 
judgment, as such ; for when I attempt to see how it is that 
I do actually, and unavoidably, and, in the fundamentally most 
necessary way, perform any act of judgment, I only exemplify 
this principle. But when I attempt either to expound or to 
criticise the principle, I come around to the statement of it in 
the form of a judgment again. It is itself, as stated, nothing 
but the pure and — as the old-fashioned language of philoso- 
phy would warrant us in saying — a priori form of all judg- 
ment. But as we prefer to express the truth : The Principle 
of Identity is only the Self's recognition of its own presupposi- 
tionless form of mental life, when in the act of judging. 

On the contrary, however, it appears that the term " prin- 
ciple of identity " is not well chosen, if one must understand 
by identity a complete and wholly indistinguishable sameness. 
Such identity as this interpretation of the term implies con- 
tradicts the very nature of judgment itself. For differentiation 

— actually performed, as the holding apart in consciousness 
of two ideas, or thoughts, or other momenta of the judgment 

— is as necessary to the actuality of any judgment as is the 

18 



274 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 

synthesis in which the judging act consists. Indeed, the 
boasted conception of Identity, as it has been made so much 
use of, both in the interests of logical truthfulness and in the 
behalf of certain unintelligible and mischievous ontological 
philosophemes, is a merely negative conception. It may be 
said to be the most barren and negative of all conceptions. 
Even to attempt to frame it, one has to refuse to think at 
all. Moreover, as will soon be shown with somewhat more of 
detail (although the fuller exposition of this truth belongs to 
metaphysics), no real being can possibly ever be known as 
thus, strictly speaking, self-identical. For the A of the sub- 
ject and the A of the predicate, in the formula of pure logic, 
no reality can ever be substituted. Fichte was true to the 
facts in the case when he posited Ego = Ego, as the original 
and the crowning exemplification in experience of the mean- 
ing of the principle of identity. But of all examples which 
could be chosen, the experience of the Self in affirming, " I 
am I, and not-you, and no other," is the best adapted to dis- 
prove the vulgar interpretation of the word " identity." Prac- 
tically, too, the mind has no interest in knowing that either 
Selves or Things are identical in any such impossible sense. 
Thus to find the Self identical with itself, if such finding 
were not made impossible by the very nature of cognition, 
would be the greatest of all misfortunes. What we want to 
know, even of things, is that we may trust them (within cer- 
tain limits which can never be strictly defined until the 
knowledge of things is itself perfect) to behave, in their dif- 
ferent individual behaviors, according to our ideas of them. 

If, now, further inquiry be made into the psychological 
nature and origin of the principle of identity, as it is actually 
given and as it must be interpreted by the act of thinking 
itself, it will be seen that this is equivalent to an inquiry into 
the psychological nature and origin of cognitive judgment. 
Sensation-complexes, ideas, thoughts, as such and considered 
abstractly, are not objects of knowledge. In order to convert 



IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 275 

them, so to speak, into objects of knowledge, they must get 
recognized as belonging together in reality. Sensation-com- 
plexes, ideas, thoughts, as such and considered abstractly, 
appear either similar or dissimilar ; and it is by a primal and 
original activity of discriminating consciousness that we rec- 
ognize them as such and thus judge them to belong together 
or apart. But the similar is not the same, and the dissimilar 
is not the contradictory, — in reality. In order to call two 
sensation-complexes, or ideas, or thoughts, merely similar, 
they must be recognized as not the same ; the rather as being 
different in respect of the time of their occurrence, or of the 
place to which they are assigned in the system of space rela- 
tions. On the contrary, two objects observed as existing in 
different times and different relations of space QA and A : or 
A and B : — A here and A there ; or A now and A then ; or 
the B here-and-now that was A then-and-there) may be 
known as the same. In these cognitive processes the same 
intellectual activities have been displayed in apprehending 
and putting together the similar and in recognizing and hold- 
ing apart the dissimilar ; but the ontological belief which 
posits the permanent in space and time must be reckoned 
with in giving account of the origin and nature of the judg- 
ment which terminates the intellectual process. Identity or 
sameness, as distinguished from similarity, is the predicate 
which cognition assigns to that which is judged really to exist. 
If, now, the principle of identity be applied to our thinking 
in a purely formal way, and as a guaranty solely of the logi- 
cal correctness of thought, all the pith and marrow is taken 
out of the principle itself. In merely having sensations, 
ideas, thoughts as such, — if, indeed, the subject of conscious- 
ness ever actually exists in states of such mere having, — no 
application of this principle is possible. As has been clearly 
shown, it is only in the act of judging that the principle of 
identity is exemplified ; it is to judgments, as a vital relating 
of sensations, ideas, and thoughts that the principle applies. 



276 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 

Nor would any conceivable series of mere sensations, mere 
ideas, mere thoughts, if such series could be carried on with- 
out affirmation or denial of a connection between its different 
members, violate the principle of identity. I may have, first, 
the idea of a man and then the idea of quadruped ; or, first, 
the idea of an animal and then the idea of immortal gods ; 
but there is no talk possible of logical correctness or real 
truth in all this, unless I attempt to judge some relation be- 
tween the members of these pairs of ideas. If, however, I 
have the mental image of a man and call it quadruped, or of 
an animal and call it immortal, then I judge. And now it 
may be said that the principle of identity has been violated, 
because it has been affirmed that man, a biped, is at the same 
time a quadruped; or that an animal, a mortal thing, is at 
the same time immortal. Such an exhortation as this, how- 
ever, is equivalent to saying : " Do not use words in that 
way ;" or, " Stick to your meaning through your sentence, at 
least ; " or, " Be consistent in your affirmations and nega- 
tions." In making judgments, one should hold to the same 
meaning for the subject, the same meaning for the predicate, 
and the same meaning for the relation affirmed by the copula 
between subject and predicate. Indeed, one must do so if 
one wishes the judgment to be true. 

"One should," and "one must:" — as to the quasi-ethical 
character of the obligation expressed by these words, we shall 
refer in another connection. But who does not at once dis- 
cover that exhortations like these are insignificant and even 
absurd, unless an appeal is made to an objective standard of 
judgment, to an order of connections in the reality known, 
which is to be followed in human, synthetic mental operations ? 
Why, indeed, should not all men use words as they please, 
without holding fast to any chosen meanings, — affirming 
with one breath what is denied the next, or even affirming 
and denying in the coupled breaths of that conscious exist- 
ence which is needed for the barest utterance of a single 



IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 277 

judgment ? Indeed, other questions may be thrust yet deeper 
into the centre of the cognizing soul of man and into the very 
heart of Reality. Why should words have any meaning at 
all ; and what gives them the meaning they are understood to 
have ? Why should affirmation or denial, the very essence of 
the act of judging, be possible at all ; or, if possible, why 
should affirmation and denial be subject to any limitations 
except those of subjective, momentary, and ever shifting ca- 
price ? The only answer that can be given to these inquiries 
restores its pith and cogency, as well as its significance and 
dignity, to the principle of identity. The intellect's standard 
of judgment is not found in the mere character and sequence 
of sensations, ideas, and thoughts, as such. Its standard of 
judgment is objective ; it has reference to the known nature 
and relations of the Self and Things, and of things with one 
another. The motif and the goal of judgment is, therefore, to 
connect together in the terms of judgment what has been cog- 
nized as being objectively connected together. He who does 
this, correctly conforming his mental synthesis to the terms 
of his objective experience, judges true. He who consciously 
and intentionally affirms that to be connected which he knows 
to be not really connected, is " a liar ; and the truth is not in 
him." But he who, while intending to conform his mental 
synthesis to the connections of reality, unconsciously and un- 
intentionally fails of this, is in error ; the truth, formally con- 
sidered, may be "in him" but his judgment is, nevertheless, 
not true. Who, again, does not at once discover that such 
common expressions assume a standard of judgment which 
has reference, not only to connections in reality, but also 
to a common nature for the judging Self? 

If, then, the true interpretation of the principle of identity 
be accepted and consistently carried out, the differences rec- 
ognized by logic in the kinds of judgment do not alter the 
epistemological significance or value of the principle itself. 
Let, for example, the distinction into judgments predicating 



278 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 

condition or action, those predicating a property, and those 
affirming a relation, be adopted. Among relations, let those 
of identity, of dependent connection, etc., be recognized. In 
each of these classes, judgments designated as purely subjec- 
tive may be found described. It is an interesting view of 
Wundt, 1 who advocates this division, that the relating of the 
constituents of a judgment as conditioning each other, is one 
of the forms of the judgment of relation which has gradually 
" developed," in the use of the most abstract and universal 
forms of thinking, through certain motifs of a scientific sort. 
We may well doubt the application of any theory of develop- 
ment to legitimate, fundamental distinctions in the kinds of 
our judgments. But the one epistemological truth which is 
important here to notice grows out of the psychological fact 
that no perception of the actions, properties, or relations of 
things is possible except in and through developed activity 
of thinking faculty, terminating in cognitive judgment; and 
that, on the other hand, thought and imagination, whenever 
they " come to judgment" refer themselves back for correc- 
tion and verification to the perception of real things and of 
actual occurrences. Thus a certain validity for reality (a 
Seinsgultigheit) 2 belongs to the very simplest judgments as 
well as to the most elaborate and abstract. They all point to 
a trans-subjective kingdom of human consciousnesses existing 
in that commerce with reality which is called truth, the 
verifiable knowledge of things, — what they are, how they 
behave, and how they are related. 

What, now, shall be said of this postulated, or cognized, 
sameness of things, such as seems necessary to make the 
principle of identity an accepted principle of cognition ? 
What kind of sameness, or identity, is postulated in that 
recognition of the principle of identity which every cognitive 
judgment affords ? The more obvious answer to this inquiry 

1 System der Philosophic, pp. 56 f. 

2 Compare Volkelt, Erfahruiig und Denken, pp. 146 f. 



IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 279 

is a negative answer. All we know about any form of reality 
— selves or things, either as active or as passive, as possessed 
of qualities, properties, and attributes, or as standing in 
manifold relations to each other — shows us that whatever 
identity realities have, is not the equivalent of an inability 
to change. Nor, if one wishes to convert an inability into 
a potency, can the identity of real things be thought of as 
the equivalent of an ability not to change. The rather are 
the essential terms, on which all cognition of things is given to 
the mind, such as that it is compelled to affirm : " We know 
that things really do change." On the other hand, however, 
only as some sort of a limit is set by things to their own 
changes, and as this limit is observed in the judgments 
framed by the mind respecting them, can they be known as 
the same things, in any conceivable meaning of the word 
" same." The guaranty, therefore, for that application to 
reality of the principle of identity which every cognitive 
judgment makes, must be found in the nature of reality, of 
its ability to change, and yet to set those limits to its own 
changes which shall enable it to be known as a system of 
beings that may be called " the same." 

The fuller meaning of this postulate as to the nature of 
Reality, as its nature is involved in the nature of the cogni- 
tive judgment, it belongs to metaphysics to unfold. But 
there is a truth or two, of a metaphysical order, which must 
be stated in this connection before the fuller meaning of the 
previous epistemological discussion can be grasped. To get 
at this truth we must refer directly to the judgments which 
express any fact of knowledge about the Self. All my states 
of consciousness — whether present and known by immediate 
self-consciousness, or past and known by recognitive memory, 
or thought and inferred from grounds of self-consciousness 
and memory — are known as mine; that is, they are referred 
to one and the same Self. But I am no rigid, fixed, and 
ready-made being, maintaining my identity by an inability to 



280 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 

change, or by an ability not to change. On the contrary, I 
am the same being because of that limitation to the changes 
to which I know I am subject; and I know myself as the 
same because all these known changes are referable and 
actually referred to the one Self. Indeed, the only concep- 
tion which I can possibly form of the identity of myself is 
given just in this life of self-consciousness, of. recognitive 
memory, and of rational inference, which is the sum-total of 
my cognition of Self. 1 And every cognitive judgment relating 
to myself, whatever form of experience it embodies (an 
action, a suffering, a property or capacity, a relation), is an 
example under this conception. 

But the self -identification which every cognitive judgment 
having reference to Self implies and enfolds is itself inex- 
tricably interwoven, as it were, with a process of discrimina- 
tion ending in a judgment of self-differentiation. Things 
which are the objects of my knowledge, even including my 
bodily organism, piece-meal or throughout, are not to be 
identified with my Self. And it needs only the expansion 
of an argument into which we have entered at length else- 
where, to show that the theory of psychological parallelism 
with the philosophical doctrine of indifference or identity 
which usually accompanies it, involves the denial of the 
possibility of all knowledge. Psychologically considered, it 
is out of the differentiation between Self and Things, as an 
indubitable and " lived " opposition, that the possibility of 
self-identification and of the identification of things comes 
forth. All the foundations of ordinary knowledge and of 
science are undermined and nullified by the identification 
of Self and Things. These two realities, in the commerce 
which is called knowledge, set limits to each other such 
as prevent their being brought together under the principle 
of identity. All experience sets the limits over which judg- 

1 For the detailed discussion of the subject, see " Philosophy of Mind," 
chap. v. 



IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 281 

ment cannot climb so as to unite these two in any other 
terms than those of irrational imagination, or wild fancy, 
rather than of cognitive judgment. 

Once more, however : What it is for things to be really 
connected so that our judgments about them may be true, 
may be judgments of cognition, — this is something which 
can be known only analogically. How can things change and 
yet be in any sort the same — with themselves, or with one 
another as partaking of a so-called common nature ? The 
identity of other selves must be conceived of, and is incon- 
testably known as similar to the identity of our Self. But in 
what does the identity of things so consist that they may 
truly be judged to be the same ? To this question no reply 
can be given whicli" does not draw, for its positive and com- 
prehensible meaning, upon our experience with the Self. But 
this "I know" to which all our theory of cognition constantly 
refers backward, when having for its object ourself, has been 
found to be no rigid unchanging, and once for all ready-made 
affair. The Self is a life conformable to law, and maintaining 
its identity by this conformity. Not as though, indeed, law 
were itself some rigid and ready-made entity, that rules over 
the Self as the inflexible walls of the prison-cell control the 
prisoner. For knowledge can grow ; or rather, I can grow 
in knowledge and in all the fulness of that life which belongs 
to a Self. I seem, then, to be really one and the same, and 
thus both self -identified and differentiated from other things, 
because the series of my changes follows the ordering of im- 
manent ideas. Shall we say, then, that judgments affirming 
the identity and the differentiations of things can be true 
only if the being of things is like this self-known being of 
ours ? 

The principle of identity, subjectively considered, is but the 
life of the intellect following its fundamental law ; and thus 
trying to put together in judgment what belongs together in 
reality, and to separate in judgment what belongs apart in 



282 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE 

reality. But if such an act of intellect can give truth, if the 
forms of mental combining and separating can be genuinely 
cognitive and representative of reality, then it would seem 
that the constitution of Reality must be, in important ways, 
similar to that of the Self. Here, again, we come upon a 
thought which has occupied us already and to which we shall 
return again. It is the thought crudely expressed in the 
ancient saying of Chwang-Tsze : — 

" The Tao is always One, and yet it requires change." 






CHAPTER X 

SUFFICIENT REASON 

THOSE simpler connections of the different items of our 
experience which are affirmed in the more obviously 
true judgments of cognition are a small part of the entire body 
of knowledge even as developed by the individual mind. But 
the entire body of knowledge to which the spirit of inquiry in 
the race has given life and growth is much more a matter of 
correct and complicated reasonings from so-called " premises " 
or " grounds.'' Scientific knowledge is pre-eminently con- 
ceptual ; for it is given in that kind of intellectual function- 
ing which sees the universal in the particular ; and then, 
having seized upon the principle, or rule, explains and anti- 
cipates the particular by connecting it with the universal. 
The students of the physical sciences, by the modern methods 
and in the modern spirit, sometimes boast of their devotion to 
those facts which the intuitions of the senses can disclose 
only to the trained observer. This they occasionally do as 
though reasoning and perception were opposed as are the 
grounds of error to the sources of truth. But every student 
of the psychology and philosophy of knowledge knows that 
what is called the " science " of external things is nothing 
but a system of more or less consistent abstractions, devised 
for purposes of practical or intellectual mastery, in depend- 
ence upon favorite points of view. These points of view are 
often rather arbitrarily selected and rapidly shifting. Is the 
Reality such as to be represented in this way ? And what 
postulate is needed in order to save the whole structure of 



284 SUFFICIENT REASON 

modern science from being perpetually imprisoned in the 
" death-kingdom " of abstract thoughts ? 

Now it is evident that whoever thinks with a view to know, 
and ends by believing that he has thought so as to attain 
knowledge actually makes the coveted postulate. For in 
spite of its dislike to consider theories of knowledge or meta- 
physical assumptions as, of inalienable right, seated in its 
own realm, physical science is science only as it has already 
come to unconsciously accepted terms with these theories 
and assumptions. It aims, of course, to hit reality by its 
conceptions ; and by its judgments respecting causes and 
laws, when seriously determined and gravely pronounced, to 
express the reciprocal relations of the really existent. If 
scientific conceptions and judgments do not aim at this, they 
are of little real value from any point of view. And if they 
do not sometimes hit the mark at which they are constantly 
bound to aim, then all scientific conceptions and judgments 
are nothing better, from the epistemological point of view, 
than dreams or other forms of illusion. 

The naive theory of knowledge, or epistemological postulate, 
which underlies the claims of science to be something more 
than dreams, to be indeed a system of cognitions, however 
fragmentary and incomplete, is neither far to seek nor hard 
to find. So far as concerns our present purpose, it is simply 
this : By reasoning from known facts of perception one may 
reach known truths of a more or less general applicability. 
Knowledge may be gained by ratiocination, if only one will 
start from knowledge and pursue the course of ratioci- 
nation in proper form. But, subjectively considered, the 
" proper form " of reasoning is that which the very constitu- 
tion of the intellect sets to itself. So that, in order to reach 
the truth of things by reasoning, some sort of a metaphysical 
assumption must be added to the epistemological postulate. 
The nature of this assumption is so hidden, and its possible 
sweep in application so far-reaching, that one may well hesi- 



SUFFICIENT REASON 285 

tate before the problem of giving it expression. Its final and 
fullest expression is very far to seek and very hard to find. 
Enough of it, however, may be brought to the surface at once, 
to show how it is that, by the subjective processes of his own 
intellect, man may follow, discover, and prove the changing 
relations of the really existent world of things. 

As to the nature of the reasoning process, an important 
train of considerations may be introduced in the following 
way. Students of the development of mental life in children 
mark a notable change, which comes on either by stages that 
cannot be readily traced or by more sudden leaps, and which 
concerns the connections established between the different 
portions of the stream of consciousness. Discontinuity, lack 
of established relations of any description, a kind of lawless- 
ness, characterizes the earlier psychoses of the human animal. 
The first signs of continuity, the earlier relations established 
so as to bring some sort of order out of this original hetero- 
geneity, are not of a predominatingly intellectual kind. Mind 
is undoubtedly active from the beginning ; for the conception 
of a purely passive or receptive consciousness is unpsycholog- 
ical and even absurd. Discriminating consciousness is neces- 
sary even in order to have state distinguished from state, in 
the flowing stream of conscious life. But, at first, the connec- 
tions of the factors which fuse into the more complex states, 
and the connections of the states with one another in the 
series of states, are, as it were, dictated from without by the 
character and successions of the stimuli which arouse sensa- 
tions, volitions, and their motor accompaniments, and the 
" cohort of attendant ideas." The next following connections 
are chiefly such as emphasize the principle of " contiguity in 
consciousness," in its power over the primary associations 
of the ideas ; thought is now chiefly active in the fuller 
perception of the content of the mental life by virtue of 
established points for the recognition of resemblances and 
differences. 



286 SUFFICIENT REASON 

In the progressive organizing of experience, conformity of 
the subjective connections to law (something other than mere 
generalized fact of established associations of the ideas) is the 
notable change to which reference was made above. Estab- 
lished " objective connection " is another term which may help- 
fully be employed for this change. Because it has already 
passed one judgment connecting its sensation-complexes, 
ideas, and thoughts in a certain way, the Self finds itself 
bound to pass one or more other judgments also connecting 
its sensation-complexes, ideas, thoughts, in a certain definite 
way. As yet it may not be that we consciously reason : If 
A is B, then C is D ; or that we consciously point out to 
ourselves why the judgment C-is-D should follow in con- 
sciousness upon the judgment A-is-B. Let it suffice that the 
connection between two judgments is simply noticed ; when 
one is made, the other is observed to follow as a matter 
of fact. This compulsion the mind comes to regard as a 
privilege ; for in it lies all the mind's power of explanation, 
and all its right to expect, to plan, to act, indeed to live 
rationally at all. 

Further development in the same direction of the conscious 
life of the intellect consists in the more and more complicated 
and yet, on the whole, firmer establishment of connections of 
similar kind ; but, especially, perhaps, in increase of insight 
into the number and character of the terms which mediate 
between the different judgments already connected in fact. 
Some of the earlier connections — not a few of them among 
the most favorably considered and highly prized — become 
broken up. But many new connections are formed. Some — 
and these among the most valuable for the life of conduct and 
of artistic endeavor — drop almost or quite out of conscious- 
ness ; but only because they have become incorporated 
into the bodily mechanism and into all the hidden and fun- 
damental structure of the mental life. It may be said of 
such connections of psychoses that they are the " acquired 



SUFFICIENT REASON 287 

constitution " for the individual mind in its particular 
environment. 

But as a matter of fact, reasoning is not understood to be, 
and it is not, a blind, compulsory, or unconscious connection 
of judgment with other judgment, however firm in actual se- 
quence the connection may be. The whole of our conscious- 
ness as we find it when we find ourselves already reasoning, 
or consciously coupling judgments firmly together, is not 
faithfully formulated by saying simply : " In the stream of 
consciousness I find A is judged to be B ; and then (in the 
temporal meaning of the word) C is judged to be i>." The 
rather must the formula to express this experience run as 
follows : " I know that C is D, because I know that A is B" 
And the more one's system of cognitive judgments has been 
made consistent and carried onward toward the ideal of 
higher cognition, the more ready is one apt to be with an 
answer to the further question, as to why any one judgment is 
made dependent upon another. This consciousness of " the 
Why " is the development of our knowledge through mediate 
terms. When, then, we come to the consciousness of the en- 
tire process which gives to the mind the satisfaction it feels in 
the judgment (7 is Z>, as a truly cognitive judgment, and not 
merely as a product of imagination or of abstract thinking, 
we find this process depends upon a mediating judgment 
which may be expressed : B is 0. And now the completed 
act of reasoning, as justified in a terminal judgment of cog- 
nition, stands before us: If — as I know — A is B, then — 
as I conclude — O is D ; because — as I know — B is C. It 
is this principle, which enters into all acts of reasoning, if 
they are to result in the extension of knowledge, that, when 
the full meaning of these acts is understood, is called " the 
principle of sufficient reason." 

The moment, however, the significance of such a procedure 
on the part of intellect is brought to the vital test of actual 
experience, it becomes evident that the procedure itself can- 



288 SUFFICIENT REASON 

not be explained as a merely logical and formal affair. Here 
is not a simple case of intellect functioning under the laws of 
its own objective activity, and so making these laws objective, 
because it cannot function otherwise than according to these 
same laws. It is not solely by conformity to any intellectual 
law, whether of its own voluntary assumption or imposed 
from some unknown outside source, that acts of cognitive 
ratiocination are either tested or explained. Kant, indeed, 
endeavored to show that the secret of the cogency which the 
act of transcendental judgment (the rather, as Schopenhauer 
correctly affirms, should he have said, the objective reference 
of the act of reasoning) has, is to be found in the facts of 
sequence according to a rule. 1 This was, perhaps, the most 
pitiful failure in all the " Critique of Pure Reason ; " and the 
failure was the more surprising because, as Kant himself has 
assured us, it was Hume's sceptical analysis of the idea of 
causality which aroused him from his " dogmatic slumber " 
and stimulated him to the task of criticising thoroughly all 
human cognition. 

Something far other than mere conscious conformity to a 
fixed order of objective ideas in time must be recognized in 
our account of the origin, nature, and significance of the 
principle of sufficient reason. The psychology of the subject, 
if it had been profoundly considered and faithfully inter- 
preted, would have led Kant to see the unsatisfactory char- 
acter of his position as taken in the passage of the Critique 
to which reference has just been made. For the wonderful 
difference of the results for cognition between the connec- 
tions of my ideas, when I perceive the successive portions of 
an object known by the senses, and when I reason my way 
to a conclusion as to the causal relations of things, depends 
mainly upon the difference sustained by the two trains of 
ideation to the activity of my will. This psychological truth 
is, indeed, hinted at and even recognized by Kant. I can 

1 Transcendental Analytic, Second Analogy. 



SUFFICIENT REASON 289 

determine by an act of will the order in which I perceive the 
successive parts of the building over yonder, whether from 
upper right-hand to lower left-hand corner, or across and 
upward, or the reverse, or any other order, to suit my con- 
venience or according to my subjective habits of perception. 
But I cannot determine by an act of will the order of the 
successive places in which the sailing-vessel, off there, shall 
appear in the stream or on the horizon of the sea. The order 
of the successive portions of the building may be perceived 
as either A, B, (7, 2), to N; or as N through D, (7, B, to A ; 
or, possibly as 2), (7, B, A, and then from D to iV, or Nto D. 
Yet the statical relations of space between A and B, C and I>, 
etc., remain, in the resulting perceptive judgment, independ- 
ent in reality, of my will. And I sum up my different expe- 
riences with the changing orders of the portions successively 
perceived, in the form of a judgment affirming a fixed and 
unchanging order of these portions in the totality of the 
perceived object. 

The different portions of the same building, so long as they 
remain related without obvious change, are not ordinarily 
thought of as doing anything to each other. If, now, I choose 
to change my point of view, I may at once think of them as 
sustaining very important reciprocal relations, which call 
them into unceasing activity, each in dependence upon the 
other. Indeed, from certain points of view, I must think of 
them in this way. From below upward, A is "sustaining" 
B, and B is " sustaining " C, and so on ; but from above 
downward, B is " pressing " down on C, and C on B, and so 
on. Or, enumerating sideways, B is " binding " together A 
and 0; or this same B must also be thought of as " separat- 
ing " its contiguous portions on either hand. The words 
" binding " and " separating " may be used in two senses, 
however, one of which coincides with the sense which is given 
to the words " sustaining," or " holding up," and " pressing 

down." To illustrate this, let us suppose that the order of 

19 



290 SUFFICIENT REASON 

the different portions of the building is being perceived as 
A, B, C, etc., up and down. That B must exist between A 
and and bind these two together, whether the order of 
their existence be read off from A to C upward or from O to 
A downward, is a necessity which my intellect recognizes as 
belonging to all material reality, since it is always known to 
be extended in space and capable of being made the subject 
of successive perceptive acts in time. In this meaning of the 
words, "binding" and "separating" are services necessarily 
to be performed by B for A and C, even if all three members 
of the series stand in the same order as stones across the 
building rather than as the same stones laid up and down. 
Now suppose, however, that while getting a knowledge of this 
building by sense-perception, I miss from its place a certain 
large stone, B, which does not stand in its proper position 
between A and (7, but has been dislodged from that position 
and is lying on the ground. If I confine my reasoning 
strictly to the conclusions following from the sensuous shock 
of missing B from the order A, B, 0, etc., when read off in 
lateral direction, I find this process results in a terminal 
judgment of no new or startling kind. If B appears as 
empty space, or is known to be only air, it will serve as well 
as would a stone to bind and to separate between A and (7, 
as long as the series is thought of as holding in reality, 
under the conditions merely of Time and of Space. 

But the sensuous shock which follows my missing B from 
its place in the series of successive portions of a building of 
stone read from A, B, (7, 2), up to JV, would undoubtedly lead 
to reasoning that falls under a quite different rubric, and that 
terminates in a cognitive judgment of a quite different signi- 
ficance and value. To bring this into clearer light for our 
recognition, let it be supposed that the same real building is 
being inspected in vertical direction, and that attention is 
directed to the importance of having the order complete in this 
direction. And now we cannot spare B from its place between 



SUFFICIENT REASON 291 

A and C; to miss it shocks something more than the smooth 
flow of the objective series regarded as determined by the in- 
tellectual functions of perception, under the formal and purely 
a priori presuppositions of space and time. Now there are 
real interests at stake which cannot be conserved by logical 
formulas or by an elaborate display of the immanent principles 
of "pure understanding." Other trowels than those which 
carry the cement of a syllogistic process, regardless of concrete 
realities, are now needed. Epistemological architectonic 
which relies upon an analysis of understanding, in a merely 
formal way, to secure the safety of cognition's structure will 
scarcely serve the purposes of the present demand for a con- 
nection between the successive portions of this experience. 
For all men believe that, in reality, B has been doing another 
kind of " binding " and " separating " between A and 0. Empty 
space, or thin air, will not suffice for this kind of binding and 
separating. 

Or, to make yet clearer the necessity for something more 
than the recognition of a sequence of ideas that our will cannot 
determine, and that is merely the objectification, as it were, 
of the a priori forms of intellectual functioning, let a yet more 
violent supposition be made. Let it be supposed that the 
object of perception is a long steel girder, which appears 
stretched from one massive wall to the other of a building. 
The business of the beholder is inspection, — a business concern- 
ing most important real interests, and not a dilettante affair of 
formal logic or theory of knowledge. The agents in the busi- 
ness, or parties to the controversy, are mechanical engineers 
who are learned respecting the strength of materials, the me- 
chanics of the girder, and other similar physical affairs, rather 
than experts in the psychology and philosophy of cognition. 
Under these circumstances it is difficult to exaggerate the 
intensity of the shock which would be experienced on discov- 
ering that so important a support of the building was inter- 
rupted at some place, for a distance corresponding to B (we 



292 SUFFICIENT REASON 

will say, for four feet between A and (7). 1 Lo ! a piece of 
matter, straight and faithful to its important function of sup- 
porting an enormous strain without sagging, and yet with one 
portion entirely gone. To see this, who would trust his eyes, 
even if after repeated rubbings they continued to bear witness 
to so great a miracle ? This kind of a shock, however, cannot 
be explained as a purely nervous affair. Nor can the trains 
of reasoning which it sets in motion and directs for the selec- 
tion of their major and minor premises be dealt with, so long 
as we continue to maintain for their explanation the merely 
formal points of view. Its nervus probandi is neither merely 
physiological, nor psycho-physical, nor purely an intellectual 
affair. The rather is it an affair which requires all the ele- 
ments of the growth of cognition, as a system of interconnected 
cognitive judgments, to be taken into the account. 

In the case just supposed, the inspectors of the building 
were appointed for the purpose of forming, by use of the senses 
in perception, a rational judgment that should affirm or deny 
its proper and safe construction. The successive items of 
their cognition gained by perception all involve thinking on 
the basis of previous experience with things as existing under 
conditions of space and time ; and they all terminate in cogni- 
tive judgments affirming real connections of the same things 
in space and time. Inasmuch, however, as this particular 
structure is being examined with a view to determine some- 
thing quite different from its conformity to the a priori rules 
of time and space, all judgments respecting it take a turn ap- 
propriate to this end ; the processes of reasoning which are 
started and followed move along lines fixed by a peculiar class 
of conceptions; and the terminal judgment is of a special 
order in respect of its origin, its significance, and its value. 

1 It was once my privilege to hear a vivid and detailed description of the feel- 
ings, thoughts, and actions of an architect who, while inspecting a building, saw 
the supports of the floor above his head in the cellar visibly yielding to their load. 
The description was an excellent study for a theory in the psychology and 
philosophy of knowledge. 



SUFFICIENT KEASON 293 

Now we contend without hesitation that all which chiefly in- 
terests the mind in the explanation of such a transaction as 
this is totally unaccounted for by Kant's doctrine of the three 
" Analogies of Experience." " All phenomena," says he, " so 
far as their existence is concerned, stand a priori under rules 
which determine their relation to one another, in one and the 
same time." x As to Kant's inadequate and lifeless account 
of the principle of identity (Analogy A), when applied to ob- 
jects of experience (his realitatis phenomena) nothing further 
need be said. But his account of the nature and grounds of 
rational judgment, as applied to the cognition of things in 
relation, is even more inadequate and lifeless. This is be- 
cause it is our apprehension of causes, and of the reciprocally 
determining conditions of things which constitutes the ade- 
quate and living picture of reality that genuine cognition 
gives. When, then, one is told that "all changes happen 
according to the law of the connection of cause and effect," 
one seems to listen with a kind of approbation which is, 
after all, only a state of expectation, to familiar but as yet 
unmeaning words. But when one is further told that the 
meaning of these words, " being connected as cause and 
effect," is this: "All that happens (begins to be) presup- 
poses something on which it follows according to a rule," 
one's disappointment at the shallowness of the analysis breaks 
all bounds. For here what is secondary takes the place, in 
explanation, of what is primary ; the regularity of the sequence 
in connection is made to assume the character of a potency 
that shall produce the sequence itself. And when Kant, in 
his following treatment of the Third Analogy, introduces the 
same problem in yet more expressive terms, and declares that 
the whole world of cognized objects is bound together by 
rational judgment under the presupposition that "All sub- 
stances, so far as they can be simultaneously perceived, are 
in complete reciprocal interaction (in durchgangiger Wechsel- 

1 Heading of the section in the first edition. 



294 SUFFICIENT REASON 

wirkung) ; and then proceeds to overlook the plainest meaning 
and most obvious implications of his own terms, in the inter- 
ests of architectonic formalism and pre-established agnosticism, 
his most devoted admirer is tempted to accuse him of an un- 
ethical juggling with words. 1 

To recur to our illustration of the nature and validity of 
cognitive reasoning once more : let us consider further that 
second meaning of the words " binding " and " separating " 
which, it was said, coincides with the meaning of the words 
" supporting " and " pressing " down. The mere grammatical 
significance of the fact that all four words have the same form 
of ending (-ing) is not without its suggestions of a fundamental 
truth. This ending is verbal and signifies that the forms of 
predicating designated by the roots — bind, separate, support, 

1 As Adickes says, the Third Analogy discusses the problem of causality, and is, 
in a special manner, " the focus of the entire Kritik." It does not, however, 
grapple with this problem in any such way as either to explain our experience 
psychologically or to satisfy our epistemological inquiries. It is even less success- 
ful, because more remote from actual life, than was the explanation of the scepti- 
cal critic criticised by Kant, — namely, David Hume. In general, there is scarcely 
anything, in the line of theoretical discussions, more inconclusive and wearisome 
than what is current on the subject of causality. Physicists and psychologists 
both know perfectly well what men really mean when they naively, and without 
prejudice, talk of causes and effects. All men think of things as doing something 
to each other, and as having something done to them ; and of themselves as doing 
something to things. Less popularly expressed, everybody believes and must 
believe, that both things and minds are real ; that both things and minds are 
active ; and that both have the forms of their activity conditioned, in a limited way, 
upon the activity of other minds and other tilings. The " laws " which science 
discovers and announces are nothing but the known or conjectured, more or less 
uniform, modes of the behavior of minds and things in their changing relations 
to each other. But let once some precious theory — like that of the conservation 
and correlation of a fixed quantity of an entity called " Force," or the psycho- 
physical parallelism which, as a revived form of Spinozism, many psychologists ( 
have taken quite off its metaphysical base, in the attempt to defend it experimen- 
tally — be imperilled, and this belief, at once "common-sense," scientifically 
defensible and philosophically sound, deserts them. They begin, as professed 
experts, to deal' with mere abstractions and empty formulas; as though these 
could account for anything, least of all for the reasoning processes which deal with 
them. And yet their very theories, thus falsely or inadequately conceived, sprang 
from no other source than that very experience the validity of which the theories 
would deny. 



SUFFICIENT SEASON 295 

and press — are applied to things because the things them- 
selves are conceived of as in action. The words express the 
mind's conceptions of the peculiar and appropriate mode of 
that action of the being, A, or B, or (7, to which the words are 
applied. But the series of judgments employed in such mental 
acts of reasoning relates to more than one object of cognition ; 
for what is affirmed is not simply that B is " binding " and 
"separating," or " supporting," or "pressing" down, — in 
loneliness of being, as a single Thing, isolated from all environ- 
ment of other beings. But B is binding and separating between 
A and C; or it is supporting C and is itself pressing down on 
A. Nor could we conceive of B as binding and separating 
between .A. and C, unless both A and C were conceived of as 
at the same time pulling apart, or pressing together. If, too, 
B supports (7, it is itself being pressed upon by C; and, 
in turn, it is pressing down upon A ; but only with the 
understanding that it is to be supported by A. All this is 
popularly and naively expressed by such phrases as accuse 
things of acting " upon " each other, or of " influencing " 
each other. 

Note, further, that the particular forms of doing and suffer- 
ing which the mind conceives of as belonging to things, are 
varied both by the relations which the same things sustain to 
one another, under the conditions of space and time, and also 
in accordance with what is called the " nature " of the things 
themselves. Nor does this nature hinder things from acting 
in a considerable number of differing ways, while maintaining 
the same relations of space and time. The same stone B can, 
without perceptibly changing its place in the structure, be 
thought of as both binding and separating, and as supporting 
and pressing down — all at the same time. Moreover, the 
science of physics undertakes to show that each stone is 
simultaneously, and without movement from its position 
as a mass, undergoing a considerable number of hidden 
and mysterious changes (thermic, chemical, electrical, etc.), 



296 SUFFICIENT REASON 

such as are reasoned about by the separate branches of this 
science. 

The thorough student of the mind's development can have 
little doubt as to the kind of experience in which all naive 
and instinctive reasoning has its origins and its justification : * 
It is the primal and universal experience of man with the Self, 
as consciously acting and having its activity resisted, while at 
the same time observing the simultaneous and succeeding changes 
which go on in the appearance of Things. This is the very 
same experience as that in which our cognitions of Self and 
of Things have their origins and justification. Its indubitable 
concrete content is given whenever the self-conscious Self be- 
comes aware of the terms of relation, so to speak, on which 
the very activity of cognition takes place as a commerce of 
Self with not-self. And this is just as often as it knows 
things as standing in relation to itself at all. The original 
connections along the lines of which the intellect proceeds, 
and by which it constantly orientates itself in its widest and 
most daring explorations of the entire domain of possible 
knowledge, are established in the cognitive judgment. So 
far as this is a judgment affirming real relations it has its con- 
tent and its connecting bond in an experience which is more 
than formal, — something other than mere thought. The 
causal nexus is an abstraction from the nisus of the Self, as 
its feeling-full will is found to change content in dependence 
upon changes in the perceived and remembered forms of the 
not-self. It is self-conscious activity, self-known force, as 
evinced in concrete doing and suffering, while the correlated 
changes in the states of things are observed, that is here most 
fundamental, rather than any a priori law of intellect dictat- 
ing changes according to a fixed rule in time. For finite 
thinking, at least, what Goethe said is true. Deed, power, 
are here the logical antecedent and basis of thought : — 

1 For further detailed discussion and illustration, see " Psychology, Descrip- 
tive and Explanatory," chapters xi. and xxi., and "Philosophy of Mind," 
pp. 212 f. 



SUFFICIENT REASON 297 

" In the beginning was the thought. 
But study well this first line's lesson, 
Nor let thy pen to error overhasten ! 
Is it the thought does all from time's first hour ? 
1 In the beginning,' read then, 'was the power. 1 
Yet even while I write it down my finger 
Is checked, a voice forbids me there to linger. 
The Spirit helps ! At once I dare to read, 
And write : ' In the beginning was the deed.' " 

Cognitive judgment, however, is not reached without think- 
ing ; on the contrary, it is the terminal of a process of think- 
ing. And further functioning of intellect is necessary to 
attain those more remote cognitive judgments which mark the 
termination of prolonged processes of reasoning. The nature 
of this further functioning is essentially the same as that 
manifested in the more primary of the cognitive judgments. 
The processes of reasoning which connect together the judg- 
ments involve no new law governing the intellectual operations. 
Nor can they be explained by simply giving shape to an ab- 
stract formula, and then calling it by either the logician's or 
the physicist's favorite term. If in the name of logic we 
affirm the meaning of " the principle of sufficient reason " to 
be as follows, "The intellect demands in explanation of all its 
conclusions some reason which shall be sufficient as a ground 
for that, and no other, particular conclusion," no light is 
thrown on the real procedure of the mind. Indeed, careful 
examination shows such a formula to be for the most part 
either unmeaning or tautological. For the important inquiry 
returns: What is it for one judgment to be "the ground" of 
another, or to " follow from " that other as its necessary con- 
clusion ? And to this inquiry no answer can be given which 
does not take us back of all mere reasoning activity, as a 
purely intellectual affair, to an immediate cognitive experience 
of the Self in its changing relations to Things. 

Nor in the phrase " sufficient reason " can any meaning be 
given to the word " sufficient " which does not involve the 



298 SUFFICIENT REASON 

entire doctrine of the criteria of truth and error ; and this is 
altogether too elaborate and doubtful an affair to be involved 
in the very statement of a primal and universal law of the 
intellect. Moreover, it is not true to experience that the 
intellect demands an explanation in grounds lying outside 
of the particular, concrete process of cognition itself, for all 
its conclusions. The rather does it strive to take all its 
tentative and hypothetical conclusions back to original cogni- 
tive judgments, with the understanding that tJiese, at least, are 
to be received as having their " grounds," their " reasons " for 
being held true, in themselves ; they are datum of fact. For 
" that-which-is-given " is in no case an unclothed, naked " that," 
a mere somewhat unknowable but injected into the process of 
thought, to give it some " stuff," or matter of content, to work 
upon. " That-which-is-given " is always this actual and con- 
crete not-me, cognized here and now as being in such and 
such reciprocally determining relations with my Self. This 
datum I do not reach, as a pure intellect, by projecting it into 
a subjectively created a priori frame-work of space and time ; 
or by reasoning my way to it as something alien to my intu- 
ition, and needing to submit itself to intellect to see if it can, 
forsooth ! answer the demands thus made upon it. 1 But I 

1 It would be of incomparable value to science, even in its modern boastful 
devotion to the truth of fact, if its students would, on the one hand, be somewhat 
more cautious about elaborating trains of reasoning which contradict immediate 
experience, and if, on the other hand, they would be somewhat more diligent 
and unprejudiced in the work of reasoning out the conclusions to which experi- 
ence seems quite clearly to point. I more than suspect that the observance of 
these rules would quite undermine the " arguments " by which are supported such 
theories as, for example, psycho-physical parallelism as applied to the causal 
relations of the body and mind in man, or that determinism in ethics which, under 
a cover of statistical data, or of materialistic psycho-physics, or of the evolutionary 
hypothesis applied to human history and human society, really brings over from 
physics its often inept and wholly figurative conception of the causal nexus, and 
plumps it down upon the life of the Self. Is it not well to remember that the 
business of intellect is not to explain facts by showing what can be or cannot be, 
however isolated in appearance and mysterious, but to criticise alleged facts, and 
to connect its own generalizations as to causes, and laws, etc., with the facts, as 
finding in them their explanation and ground ? 



SUFFICIENT REASON 299 

find it there, present with an ever-increasing fulness of con- 
tent, as I more attentively and shrewdly observe what it is ; 
and as I, on the basis of such observation, reason to con- 
clusions as to what further it may be or must be. 

From the points of standing afforded by valid cognitive 
judgments of perception and of self-consciousness, the intel- 
lect proceeds in its work of generalization and abstraction. 
It is in these latter processes that the form of its functioning 
as reasoning faculty consists. Our experience with ourselves 
as acting in ways partly self-determined and partly determined 
in dependence upon our changing relations to things, and our 
experience with things as acting in different ways when their 
perceived relations to us and to one another change, becomes 
itself the subject of thought, feeling, and volition. These 
ways of the behavior of things, when remembered and re- 
flected upon, are generalized ; they are abstracted from the 
concrete things to which they are always observed to belong, 
and are converted into classes of entities, powers, causes, that 
may be thought of as related to each other in the form of 
laws. This is, of course, that very procedure of thought 
which produces conceptual and so-called scientific knowledge. 
Let it be noted, however, that such a procedure is not, in its 
simplest expression, a fully conscious syllogistic act. When 
it is affirmed that the judgment " Adam Smith is mortal " is 
a conclusion from the universal principle "All men are 
mortal," through the mediate conception, or middle term, 
"man" (because Adam Smith, etc.), the real procedure of 
intellect is neither explained nor properly expressed. Un- 
less the mere name of the individual — in this case " Adam 
Smith" — means to me some man or other, the problem of 
the mortality of the being designated by the name is no prob- 
lem for reasoning at all. And, as has been pointed out with 
infinite pains by logicians themselves, the real difficulty is 
to understand the right to postulate the universality of the 
general principle " All men are mortal," when as yet we 



300 SUFFICIENT REASON 

S 

have not taken this particular man into the account. But 
in case we admit this right, how can any advance in genuine 
knowledge come by so-called reasoning ? 

The formal difficulty vanishes as soon as we leave the 
logical and assume the less trifling and more profound 
epistemological point of view from which to regard the act 
of reasoning and its claims to validity, when applied to the 
actual relations of really existent things. Here two simple 
but important considerations must be kept in mind. First, 
there is evidently some firmly established expectation of a 
continuity in the existence of things, and a belief in a con- 
siderable amount of uniformity in the behavior of these same 
things, under their ordinary relations to us and to one an- 
other. But, second, this expectation is only a relative affair ; 
it is not so firmly fixed that it cannot be shaken, and even 
upset, by new facts of cognition ; nor can it be claimed that 
the belief applies in a perfectly inflexible way either to the 
particular events of experience or to the entire world of 
things. To recur to the example brought forward in the last 
paragraph : we do expect confidently that Adam Smith will 
die ; and we believe that, in fact, he is at present so consti- 
tuted as to be worthy of being called " mortal." This expec- 
tation is in some sort an outgrowth of our general confidence 
in the obedience (to speak figuratively) of tilings to laws, in 
their fidelity to tolerably consistent ways of behavior. On 
the other hand, we are by no means absolutely sure that 
Adam Smith may not be an exception to the general rule ; 
for, indeed, alleged cases of exception exist which, although 
lacking in sufficient evidence to allow us at once to pronounce 
cognitive judgment upon them as a basis, deserve to appear 
in evidence. Nor can any one deny that the reasons, not 
only in theory but in observation, for admitting certain ex- 
ceptions have seemed "sufficient" to many of our fellow-men. 
Still less warranted are we in affirming that any known law 
of the behavior of things in the whole universe is of abso- 



SUFFICIENT REASON 301 

lutely universal application ; even still less in holding that 
the system of laws which constitutes the body of modern 
physical science has always been in the past, or will always 
be in the future, an inflexible control over the beings to 
which expanding experience may introduce us. 

The sceptical criticism of Hume, in his treatment of the 
principle of causation, is quite invincible in one particular. 
No account of the terms on which this principle is applied to 
the transactions that take place between things can be given 
without admitting to this account the determining influence of 
belief and expectation, as bred of psychical habit, and as con- 
stantly confirmed by additional experiences. This influence 
is positive matter of fact. As all critical thinkers now admit, 
we never discover, either to sense or to thought, any extra- 
mentally existent causal nexus between individual things. 
Nor do we find in mere conceiving, or thinking, the warrant 
for affirming that such a relation in reality exists between 
them. Kant's formal analysis of intellect, taken on his own 
terms, does not supply this needed warrant. On the other 
hand, it is a fundamental law of our psychical existence that 
repeated connections in its " momenta," actually established, 
excite the expectation of further repetitions of the same con- 
nections. Connections frequently and vividly impressed be- 
come regarded as legal, as naturally and rationally to be 
expected ; and if they are not met with, then both feeling 
and intellect seem offended and violated. The offence and 
the violation are primarily of an emotional and practical 
origin ; but they are confirmed by those activities of thought 
which have actually terminated in judgments respecting the 
customary modes of the behavior both of Self and of Things. 

One may safely go much further, and yet conserve all the 
interests of the philosophy of knowledge, in one's concessions 
to the claims of a sceptical empiricism upon this point. In- 
deed, in fidelity to truths of fact one must go somewhat 
further. Knowledge neither reposes upon, nor itself guaran- 



302 SUFFICIENT REASON 

tees the perfectly unswerving uniformity of natural laws, or of 
the causal relations of things to each other, as a principle of 
all valid reasoning about things. "The uniformity of na- 
ture," so-called, cannot be strictly affirmed as an intellectual 
intuition taking us straight into the heart of reality ; nor is it 
known a priori as the reflection of the uniform mode of all 
reasoning, the fundamental law of the intellect, projected into 
a frame-work of space and time. It is itself, the rather, 
a growing impression or conviction, built up on a basis of 
conflicting experiences which can establish it, at last and at 
best, only in the form of a general working postulate. We 
say, " on a basis of conflicting experiences ; " for, in fact, the 
very data which furnish the form for the belief in such a con- 
nection of the different items of experience as makes it possi- 
ble to reason from one to another, largely argue against any 
rigid construction for the conception of uniformity. This is 
easily explicable as soon as it is remembered how much of the 
most interesting and fruitful human experience concerns the 
impulsive volitions, the blind, unbidden desires, and irrational 
strivings, of the Self. Thus does every man, at the beginning 
largely, and to no small degree all the way through, act and 
react upon things in his changing relations, in an irregular 
and spasmodic way, rather than so as to emphasize a se- 
quence of events objectively determined according to some 
"fixed ruleP 

What is true of the basis for reasoning, so far as it lies 
chiefly in the consciousness of Self, is also true in a smaller 
degree of the same basis so far as it lies in the perceived 
relations of interacting things. To the untrained mind they 
appear little more obedient to law, or unswervingly faithful to 
the principle of uniformity, and so little better fitted to serve 
as points of departure for assured processes of reasoning, than 
does the Self when directing its observant and expectant eye 
upon itself. Things, too, at the beginnings of mental develop- 
ment, seem full of caprice, driven by desire, and moved by 



SUFFICIENT REASON 303 

conscious strivings, to reach certain particular ends. They 
act, often enough, as though they had no respect for law. 
But, none the less, in many most important and impressive 
relations, all men are quickly compelled to learn that things 
can be depended upon to behave in uniform ways ; and thus 
the mind can construct formulas for the accustomed and well- 
known modes of their behavior as premises, or fixed points 
for starting, in its ratiocinative processes. ".All fire burns ; " 
and, therefore, I expect tins molten mass of metal to burn me 
unless I keep my skin well cleared of contact with it. But if 
it be true that a certain royal personage once plunged his 
finger into such a molten mass, with full confidence in the 
word of a scientific friend that, if he would do this quickly, 
no harm would come, he, by deed done in faith, contradicted 
triumphantly the legitimate conclusion reached by sound 
syllogistic argument upon premises established by his own 
most familiar experience. 

The growing accumulation of knowledge as to the custom- 
ary behavior of things, under given relations to us and to 
one another, forms the basis for those acts of reasoning which 
enter most largely into life, and to which reference was made 
above. They are general judgments which summarize the 
experience given to us in those individual judgments that 
terminate the process of thinking in recognition of the envis- 
aged relation of Self and Things, as active and passive, and 
thus bound together by the feeling-full and voluntary act of 
cognition itself. In some sort, the leap to the individual 
judgment, " This man is mortal ; " or " This molten metal 
will burn me," may properly be called a conclusion. It is 
a " drawing-out " of the meaning of what is included in 
the general judgment, " All men are mortal ; " or, " All fiery 
things will burn." But neither the reason nor the sufficiency 
of the process is to be found in the merely formal connection 
of the conclusion with the premises. The ground of both 
is in the cognitive judgments which declare the original 



304 SUFFICIENT REASON 

experiences; and here the nervus probandi is sensitive to 
stimulations from actuality in the form of fact. The law 
of the intellect is to generalize the facts. In this work of 
generalization, the intellect carries over to its concepts all the 
potencies of feeling and will with which the Self knows itself to 
be endowed, and which it analogically feels obliged to recognize 
in Things. 

The activity of the human intellect in enlarging the bounds 
of knowledge by processes of reasoning does not, by any means, 
stop with such relatively simple processes as have already 
been described. Suppose, to employ illustrations which have 
served our purpose before, I inquire : Why are all men judged 
mortal in such way as that I can, with reason, affirm any par- 
ticular man to be also mortal ? or, Why do I regard the 
stones in any building, in spite of their placid and unchanging 
appearance, as continually supporting and causing strains, 
etc. ? In answer to the first question one must consider in 
a more fundamental way what a " man " is understood to be. 
He is an animal, a complex organism, a complicated piece of 
molecular mechanism, generated by a pair in the species, 
growing in subjection to physico-chemical laws by metamor- 
phosis of physical materials ; and so coming under the most 
general formulas for determining the probable destination 
of those materials. This now is, largely if not chiefly, what I 
wish to express by calling him a man, — namely, an animal 
of the human species. And now I can affirm the mortality 
of each particular man, because he is a man, with a quite new 
meaning to my words. I now know in a complicated way 
a great variety of reasons for the conclusion that "Adam 
Smith " is mortal. These reasons are, in part, general con- 
clusions already established along several different lines of 
concurrent experiences. The number of major premises from 
which I may now start my processes of reasoning to the con- 
clusion is greatly increased. Such premises include not only 
my individual cognitions about A, B, and G, whom I have 



SUFFICIENT REASON 305 

known as men, and known to die, but the accumulated cogni- 
tions of centuries of experience respecting the nature of mat- 
ter, the origin and duration of life, the cosmic laws and 
cosmic changes, — in brief " the science," of the animal called 
" man." Here certainly we have reasoning of a higher kind ; 
both because it is based on a much enlarged system of cogni- 
tive judgments, and also because it is more conscious of the 
nature, number, and value of its middle terms. 

The same aspect of the reasoning process is laid bare by 
a further analysis of the other example which was chosen for 
illustration. Experts in mechanical engineering, when sum- 
moned to form a judgment affirming or denying the safety 
of a building, bring with them, in their memories or in their 
pockets, a number of general judgments already formed, 
which may serve as major premises. The conclusion at 
which they plan to arrive admits of statement either in cate- 
gorical or hypothetical form ; and either as a statement of 
present matter of fact or as a prediction. Thus they may 
conclude, " This building is (or is not') safe ; " or " If this 
building is not strengthened, it will fall " (or the opposite 
judgment, " Even if it is not strengthened, it will not fall "). 
The major premises for the argument leading to the conclu- 
sion are numerous ; they concern the strength of materials of 
various kinds ; the laws of strains, loads, and resistances, 
and the practical principles for distributing them properly ; 
the effects of weather, weights, and different chemical changes 
upon the strength of materials ; — in a word, the mechanics, 
physics, and chemistry of the day, so far as bearing on the 
problem. These premises are themselves conclusions reached 
by a vast amount of reasoning which has been more or less 
successfully accomplished during scores of generations of 
men. But the original points of starting from which it was 
concluded to these premises, to this collective " science " of 
safe and proper building, were certain cognitive judgments 
representing known facts of relation. In all these cognitive 

20 



306 SUFFICIENT REASON 

judgments A was conceived of as doing something to B (as 
binding and separating, supporting and pressing down, pull- 
ing or resisting, etc.), in a more or less uniform way. 

If, however, any such act of reasoning is to proceed to its 
desired accomplishment, and conclusive judgment is to be 
passed, minor premises also must be supplied. These must be 
got, chiefly, by observation of the actual facts of the particular 
case. A — namely, that girder there — is strong enough ; but 
B — to wit, that row of pillars yonder — is too weak or is not 
properly placed; and C — the mortar employed — is dirt, not 
gritty sand, and has not enough of good cement, and, " there- 
fore," not enough of binding force. Scanty reflection upon 
this work of collecting minor premises shows at once that, 
what is expressly true of the last of the above-mentioned 
three premises is true of all of those mentioned and of 
all such premises as can possibly be supplied. They imply 
the confidence of the reasoners that the building is itself 
an extra-mentally existent being, composed of a vast collec- 
tion of beings which are all reciprocally active and passive, 
doing something and having something done to them, accord- 
ing to their customary ways. This confidence is to be de- 
rived and explained only in accordance with the primary 
nature of the operations of complex cognitive faculty, as that 
nature has been critically examined in the previous chapters, 
especially in the chapter upon u Knowledge of Things and 
Knowledge of Self." 

What enormous assumptions! What boundless presump- 
tion! What reckless and unjustifiable credulity — unless, 
indeed, it be an activity of the most rational, feeling-full and 
voluntary faith — is involved in all this ! But whatever the 
implicates are, upon them, as upon its only justifiable basis, 
does the entire structure of physical science repose. As- 
sumption, presumption, credulity, — or rational, feeling-full, 
and voluntary faith ? this, at any rate, is not of itself a 
question to be decided by ratiocination ; for all reasoning 



SUFFICIENT REASON 307 

and especially all highly conceptual processes of reasoning 
require just such premises as these. In such premises all 
reasoning finds its justification or its grounds. But the 
assumptions are themselves grounded, yet lower down and 
further back, in the primary acts of knowledge ; they are 
immanent in the cognitive judgments of our indubitable 
experiences with Self and with Things. All major premises, 
in themselves considered, are, then, judgments of relation 
between hypothetical entities, such as can never be made 
matters of self-consciousness or of sense-perception, and be- 
tween abstractions of properties and powers, such as never 
find a pure or unmixed realization in the actual intercourse 
of things; and these entities, properties, and powers, are 
affirmed to be connected under terms of formulas which are 
known to be only approximately exact. The minor premises, 
on the other hand, have just been seen to be shot through and 
through with those constructs of thought and imagination 
which are derived by the analogical projection into things of 
the self-consciously recognized reasons for the Self's activity 
and passivity, in conformity with its observed changes of 
relations toward things. From the major premises, through 
terms supplied by the minor premises, the mind " draws," or 
" infers," or " concludes," the terminal judgment : " The 
building is (or is not) safe ; " or, " The building will (or will 
not) fall." But if, as is apt enough to be the case, the 
major premises are complicated and somewhat conflicting, 
or are not obviously applicable, and the needed minor prem- 
ises can be only partially supplied ; or even if the theoretical 
or practical interests of the reasoners are at variance as re- 
spects the most " desirable " or " fitting " conclusion, then the 
judgment terminating the ratiocinative process may be ques- 
tioned, divided, or totally in doubt. Some will then say, the 
building is surely safe ; but others will say, it is by no means 
safe. One expert will predict with confidence that it will 
fall ; but two other experts will offer to guarantee by a large 



308 SUFFICIENT REASON 

sum of money that it will not fall. Meanwhile there the 
building stands, just as it is and no other, in a sort of silent 
scorn of all human attempts to penetrate assuredly its entire 
and most hidden nature. In despite of scientific predictions, 
in reality it will fall or it will not fall — as it and its natural 
environment " will" and not as the scientific experts wish, 
or think, or conclude, respecting its appointed end. 

It appears, then, that the goal of that cognition after which 
the mind strives in its processes of reasoning is the establish- 
ment of causal relations that have truth in reality. With this 
we believe ourselves to be concerned, while conducting those 
elaborate intellectual operations by which the real world 
becomes known as a complicated system of interrelated selves 
and things. In order, therefore, to understand the meaning 
of the reasoning process, and of the confidence it implies, as 
well as the limits of its possible achievements in the way of 
adding to our knowledge, we must investigate the conception 
of causation itself. This investigation leads us back to the 
nature of those primary experiences of knowledge out of 
which comes all systematic knowledge of the world in which 
we live. Here we are reminded that in knowing any thing, 
by the most fundamental and primary cognitions of sense- 
intuition, the Self becomes aware of itself as active, and also 
as resisted in relation to that which is not-self, which is 
indeed other than Self. Will and other-being, my will and 
other will, — these, observed, remembered, compared, subjected 
to all the activities of a growing consciousness of discrimina- 
tion, such as is called the development of intellect, or in a 
word, thought, in the relation of commerce called cognition, 
furnish the account of the causal conception. It is this same 
experience which leads thought still further to frame the con- 
ceptions of " conformity to law," of " a sequence of events 
objectively determined according to a fixed rule," of the " uni- 
formity of nature ; " and to the pet generalization of modern 
physical science : u Every event happens only as an effect ab- 



SUFFICIENT REASON 309 

solutely predetermined by other preceding events which con- 
stitute its cause." The experience itself is the presupposition 
of the conception of law, or invariable rule, etc., — however 
we may choose to phrase so abstract a summary. The formula 
is only the more or less highly developed exhibition of repeated 
and indubitable cognitive experiences of Self and Things as 
known in various relations. The fact is indubitable, it is, in- 
deed, matter-of-fact of every completed cognition. But the 
establishment of uniformities, laws, and forms of general rela- 
tion of an abstract kind, is always a relative affair, never 
complete, but subject always to the possibility of doubt. Our 
cognition of the particular reasons which must serve as middle 
terms for the reasoning process is very often uncertain, vague, 
meagre, and ambiguous, — no fitting representation of the 
actual, indefinitely manifold, and yet precise causal relations 
of nature. And, finally, this picture of known causal rela- 
tions, as the only actual and possible relations, the picture, 
namely, of a vast and self-contained mechanism, every part of 
which is bound solidly together from beginning to end, and 
from centre to circumference by unyielding laws, is itself no 
a priori structure of the human intellect. It is not a wholly 
defensible work of the artistic imagination ; it is not even a 
creditable dream of what may possibly sometime be reasoned 
out into a conception resting on grounds of incontestable cog- 
nitive judgments. Much less is it God's final truth about the 
whole matter. 

The truth of our critical estimate of the use of reason in 
the knowledge of nature might be elaborately argued and satis- 
factorily established by an appeal to the particular sciences 
themselves. This task, indeed, belongs, with all its details, 
to the philosophy of nature ; and no other task cries out 
more loudly for some masterful hand to undertake it. The 
physical and natural sciences, in spite of their recent wonder- 
ful advances (perhaps rather in consequence of these ad- 
vances), were never before so full of abstract conceptions 



310 SUFFICIENT REASON 

that need a critical treatment by philosophy. Our present 
purpose, however, requires only a glance at certain fields 
covered with a mixture of flowers, grains, and weeds, that 
await the efforts of the expert analyzer. 

And first, it may be questioned whether there are any 
physical laws so universal as not to be forced to recognize 
wholly inexplicable exceptions in the very heart of the domain 
over which they hold sway. For example, the law of gravita- 
tion affirms that, without exception, all physical bodies attract 
each other, directly as their mass, and inversely as the square 
of their distance. But this law, or abstract formula, explains 
only the movement of bodies near the earth, of the planets 
around the sun, of the satellites around their planets, and of a 
select few couples of the stars. It explains these movements 
of bodies only if other considerations may be neglected, such 
as never are in reality neglected by the bodies themselves. 
All these bodies which most obviously fall under this law 
are, however, moving together onward in space with an 
apparent complete disregard of all other bodies outside of 
their own system. The directions and velocities of the several 
movements of the stars fall under no common principle that 
astronomy can discover. And, to take an extreme example, 
one of them (" 1830 Groombridge ") is flying through space 
at a rate many times as great as it could attain if it had 
fallen through infinite space, from all eternity, toward the 
entire physical universe. What caprice of Will gave it the 
initial fling that has enabled it so to flout at the principle of 
sufficient reason in the form of the so-called " universal law 
of gravitation " ? Again, it is a well-nigh universal law of 
physics that both solids and fluids contract when cooled 
and expand when heated ; but there is the startling well- 
known exception of water at the degree of freezing. It 
is a law of chemistry which affords one of the main props 
for the atomic theory, that fluids hold in solution more of the 
solids soluble in them, at a higher degree of temperature. 



SUFFICIENT REASON 311 

But calcium sulphate (or gypsum) dissolves to a limited extent 
in cold water, but, on a rise of temperature to about 135° 
Cent, it deposits ; and calcium hydroxid (common slaked 
lime) is more soluble in hot than cold water. If the case of 
the gypsum is " explained " by its passing from a hydrated 
to an anhydrous form, such an explanation for the lime can 
at present only be suspected. And then there is the case of 
common salt, which, for reasons only known to itself, has 
practically the same solubility in both cold and hot water. 
But, however these and similar " exceptions " to laws of the 
widest applicability may be explained, the fact of there being 
exceptions is itself what carries the import of greatest use 
to our present discussion. This import administers a crush- 
ing rebuke to those who hold the " reign of law " (whatever 
this may mean) in such manner as to contradict the concrete 
internal and external facts by which the varied Life of Reality 
is actually made manifest. 

Another field from which to gather illustrations for our 
present contention is afforded by entire bodies of scientific 
truth, whole " sciences," so-called. We are not unmindful 
of the fact that it is customary to speak of this " reign of law," 
and of the resulting uniformity of human nature, by students 
of psychology and of the psychological sciences, of eco- 
nomics, sociology, history, and even ethics and religion. But 
here the distinction must be insisted upon between knowl- 
edge and hypothesis, and between an hypothesis that conforms 
to known facts for their better theoretical handling, and one 
which is itself framed in the interests of yet more doubtful 
hypotheses. One might even descend from psychology into 
some of the physical and natural sciences to illustrate the 
truth that alleged " uniformities," a " reign of law," and the 
conception of " sequences objectively determined according 
to a fixed rule," are themselves too frequently abstractions 
unsupported by the facts, or even figments of imagination 
most plainly contradicted by facts. It seems to us that the 



312 SUFFICIENT REASON 

time is fully come to recognize not only the truth of the frag- 
mentary character of all science, but a far profounder and 
more wide-reaching truth. How do we know that it is the 
Nature of Things to be under " universal laws," if by this 
term be meant fixed rules imposed from without, or lying 
mysteriously immanent in things ? How do we know that 
uniformity, in the sense of unceasing repetition of the old 
relations according to unchanging formulas, is the funda- 
mental principle followed by the Really Existent ? If now 
an appeal is made to the past successes of this assumption, 
the case is not at all so conclusive as it is customarily 
represented to be. 

In all of the physical and natural sciences, improved 
methods of observation have recently extended the number 
of inexplicable single facts, and of whole classes of such facts, 
much faster than the reasoning faculty has been able to pro- 
vide laws for them. The seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies were characterized by a few splendid generalizations, 
which seemed to their discoverers and to the age destined to 
reduce the entire universe to a mechanical system whose terms 
should be strictly calculable. In these generalizations was to 
be found the unfailing source of the " reasons " why things 
behaved as they always did behave ; and also the " grounds " 
of the confident predictions that they would continue unswerv- 
ingly to behave in the same way. In the present century, 
when the Darwinian hypothesis, in spite of the pitifully narrow 
range of observed facts and of incontestable judgments of 
experience on which it was " grounded," was placed by Mr. 
Huxley and its other ardent admirers on a level, for certitude, 
with the principle of gravitation, it seemed, indeed, as though 
all life, even up to the life of the artistic, religious, and cog- 
nitive spirit of man, was about to be formulated by similar 
treatment. Nor are claimants for the name of " science " yet 
wanting who neglect a truly scientific reserve, and are ready 
to accept or reject, to interpret fairly or to sophisticate, the 



SUFFICIENT REASON 313 

facts according as they bear upon foregone general conclusions 
confirming their particular theory of evolution. 

On the whole, however, the nineteenth century — and 
especially the last quarter of it — has been growing into a 
distrust of glittering generalizations, with their high-sounding 
claims to reign over the whole realm of the concrete, content- 
full, and seemingly capricious and ever mysterious Being of 
the World. Even astronomy, the most mathematical and 
deductive of the applied sciences, has of late been multiplying 
facts faster than it has been able to reduce them to the 
uniformity of laws, by reflecting upon their connections 
through either known or hypothetical middle terms. And — 
to pass at once to the other extreme — he who has seen an 
amoeba and a fresh-water hydra, after due preparation and 
preliminary skirmishes, fight it out to a finish in truly heroic 
and artistic fashion, is much more likely henceforth to con- 
ceive of them as beings with appetites, passions, conscious 
cunning, and no mean resources of will and intellect, than 
as molecular mechanisms that may soon be served up as 
examples of problems solved in thermo-dyn amies and the 
lawful action of merely physico-chemical forces. So, too, 
when one hears what is given out as a " science " of sociology 
in terms of biological and mechanical evolution, with much 
talk of " social forces," " social organism," and of inexorable 
" laws " to which this organism is subject ; and when one 
turns to face the concrete and life-like picture of the multi- 
tudes of men in the present world and in the course of history ; 
then, too, one inclines to believe that these souls are them- 
selves the forces, and that their ever varying and self-chosen 
relations to the world of things and to each other are the laws 
which constitute the figuratively so-called social organism. 
Forces are not existent, so far as the science of sociology 
goes, until the souls are existent ; they are no more uniform 
than are the souls from which the forces spring. And as to 
laws of a " social organism," there are none, except those 



314 SUFFICIENT SEASON 

which are made by the action and interaction of the souls 
themselves. But these are not ready-made laws, as it were ; 
they are only the actual, but ceaselessly varying and, as we 
hope, improving modes of the behavior of the individual 
members of the so-called organism. 

In brief, men reason about things for practical purposes, 
and thus know them increasingly so far as getting along well 
with them is concerned. Fortunately, those things that most 
nearly determine human daily interests, the common weal or 
woe, are found to be tolerably consistent in their behavior. 
The solid ground on which men walk, the sources of their 
support, the implements they handle, and in much inferior 
degree, the animals of their customary intercourse are fairly 
trustworthy. But sometimes out of a clear sky the light- 
ning strikes ; or out of a sweet air the Russian influenza 
falls ; the weather and the dependent crops are uncertain ; 
all learn to be cautious in matters involving the behavior of 
the lower animals and of their fellow-men ; and those who 
reside in Japan know that, at any moment, the ground beneath 
them may be lifted aloft or sunk into the depths. Neverthe- 
less, further and more careful observation, helped on so far 
as possible by experiment, gives grounds for reasoning to a 
new and higher confidence in things. In a measurable de- 
gree we discover middle terms, in the form of minute entities 
(the molecules and atoms), or of hidden masses (the internal 
fires and caverns underground), or of unsuspected properties 
and relations (thermic, chemical, biological) which serve to 
connect the seemingly contradictory experiences into a more 
rational whole. Many of these connections, at first hypo- 
thetical, lead to somewhat broad generalizations which, when 
they are themselves employed as major or minor premises, 
land the mind on the firm ground of verifiable cognitive 
judgments again. Expectations are modified ; some are 
strengthened and others abandoned. The courses of the 
reasoning processes and of the concluding judgments are 



SUFFICIENT REASON" 315 

changed. The convictions which give them their special 
cogency prove alterable, in respect of degree and of points of 
application. Even the general conviction that by reasoning 
man can find out the ultimate Being of the World, or extend 
his cognitions of its actual nature and uniform modes of 
behavior (if, indeed, It has such modes), is sometimes shaken. 
But, on the whole, the conception of the World of Things as 
some sort of a Unity is enriched and deepened. 

Once more at this point, however, we must return to make 
further examination of our knowledge of Self and of Things 
as a basis for the general confidence in our reasoning processes. 
It will be found that all " reasons," or " grounds," from which 
conclusions are drawn may be divided into two quite dif- 
ferent classes. Both these classes of reasons are employed 
in every completed process of reasoning. Both of them, 
moreover, when examined, quickly lead our thought to the 
limits of what is immediately known ; and from there they 
point it beyond to what must always be a matter of rational 
postulating, or abstract theorizing, or fanciful conjecture. 
These two classes of reasons are embodied in current con- 
ceptions of the "nature" of things as both active and pas- 
sive, and of the further conditions determining the modes 
of activity or passivity, as found in the " relations " of things. 
Thus the complete reasons for the behavior of things are 
thought to reside both in their own nature and in their 
relations to other things. 

When, for example, I let a certain quantity of a gas 
mingle with a certain quantity of a gas H, under determinate 
relations of temperature, pressure, etc., = X, I find that a 
compound of a totally new nature, TV, is the result. I therefore 
express my knowledge of the chemical constitution of water 
by the formula H 2 ; and my knowledge of the law of the 
combination of hydrogen and oxygen gases, when brought 
under the relations of X, to be a proportion of 2002 to 1000. 
This is reasoned and conceptual, or scientific, knowledge. But 



316 SUFFICIENT REASON 

now if I press still further my inquiry after reasons, and de- 
mand to know why this thing, 0, behaves in this particular 
and no other way, when it is brought under these precise, and 
no other quite dissimilar relations to this other thing, H', and 
if I also demand to know as much with regard to the latter, 
the H, I can hardly fall back on reasons at all. I can only 
blindly say: It is the " nature" of and H so to behave, 
under these and no other dissimilar " relations." But then, 
the chemist can describe many other modes of the behavior 
of both and H, under a great variety of relations besides X 
to an almost endless number of other things, with natures of 
their own. But why is it the nature of and of imprecisely 
so to behave ; and why do these particular relations, X, have 
anything decisive to do with the changing modes of the be- 
havior of these things ? To such a question no answer can 
be found ; in fact the things do so behave, and in fact rela- 
tions of things do always have to do with how things behave. 
The limit of all cognition by reasoning has been reached in the 
unreasoning recognition of cognized facts. 

" We have no answer to make," and " We have reached 
the limit of all cognition," — but only if we are unable 
to get the facts into our consciousness in another way, and 
thus to regard them from a new and higher point of view. 
For if the cognized facts are deeds done by a Self with a con- 
sciously recognized end in view, then it is possible to explain 
to its very centre the u reason" for the facts. If I simply find 
myself to be acting and suffering in certain more or less 
uniform ways, with relation to observed changes in the active 
and passive condition of things, but without any conscious 
discrimination or choice of aught to be gained as a good, or 
avoided as an evil, I have no further reason to give, or to 
seek, for such facts. They are so, and that is the end of the 
matter. To ask, further, why they are so is to ask an 
absurd and unanswerable question. But in experience this is 
not the case with all deeds of cognition. Certain items, and 



SUFFICIENT REASON 317 

those not a few, in my experience do, indeed, end in this 
way. Thus I act and thus I suffer, without any conscious- 
ness of a "why," of a reason for acting and suffering thus 
rather than in some totally different way. That is to say, 
out of the dark and incomprehensible " ground " of my own 
nature in its unintelligible relations to the dark and incom- 
prehensible nature of things, these states of my being seem 
to proceed. Such procedure in reality makes necessary the 
ending of my own reasoning processes in that which is not a 
subject for reasoning. On the other hand, certain other items 
of my experience — and these not few in number, but of the 
greatest practical and aesthetical as well as cognitive import 
— involve the consciousness of activity and of passivity as 
determined by chosen forms of intercourse with things, in 
the pursuit of conscious ends. This part of my experience, 
when made the subject of further reflection, throws a new 
light upon the meaning and the limits of reasoning. It leads 
to a consideration of the teleology of all knowledge, and of 
the corresponding immanence of final purpose in the really 
existent objects of knowledge. 

Nor can the consciousness of an end be separated from the 
explanation of the nature, and the defence of the validity of 
any act of reasoning. This consciousness is operative in the 
determination of the primary cognitive judgments from which 
all reasoning takes its start. This consciousness itself forms 
a part of the original experience with the causal conception ; 
and it gives characteristic coloring to the " connection," to 
the "bond," which is assumed to exist between Self and 
Things, as well as among things themselves. We are not 
unaware of the present wide-spread denial of this fact ; and 
alas ! of the sometimes monstrous and mischievous conclusions 
derived from this denial. It is enough at present to stand by 
those facts which are indisputable and inseparable " momenta " 
and presuppositions of all knowledge. The "grounds" on 
which all acts of reasoning repose, so far as they can possibly 



318 SUFFICIENT REASON 

be explored by an analysis of knowledge itself, are laid bare 
when we behold the nature of the Self revealing itself in the 
pursuit of some conscious good. This is the final answer to 
the question " Why ? " And the answer cannot be divorced 
from the conception of that causal relation which all reason- 
ing assumes as binding together, in reality, the things of the 
physical world. For it is in the same experience that the 
answer to the question " By what cause determined ? " has 
its origin and its import. 

A sleeping postulate, therefore, underlies all our account of 
the principle of sufficient reason. The explication of this 
postulate belongs to metaphysics as ontology. But we must 
recognize it as implicate in a satisfactory theory of knowledge. 
Two somewhat opposed directions, however, seem indicated 
for this theory, if it would conform itself to the facts 
of cognition considered as falling under the principles of 
identity and sufficient reason. One direction follows the lines 
of thinking rather in opposition to those of the actual being 
of things ; the other seeks to demonstrate that the forms of 
thought are the forms of the being of things. One teaches 
us to consider how much of an antecedently unthinkable sort 
seems necessary in order to give full recognition to the nature 
and the limits of our reasoning processes. The particular, 
the unique, even the perverse and contradictory, interpene- 
trates the content of knowledge. 1 Every act of cognition is 
a problem, and the problem cannot be solved by reasoning 
alone. The very Being and the Becoming of the World, as 
given to the human mind, seems full of contradictions. It 
is the great riddle itself ; and there is none greater to be sus- 
pected behind it. The extreme apriorism which maintains 
the absolute universality and objective necessity of those 
inner modes of apprehension that are employed upon the 
world of things may fitly be criticised by showing to how 

1 Compare Uphues, Kritik des Erkennens, p. 106. Lasson, Der Satz vom 
Widerspruche, Philosophische Vortrage, 1885, pp. 208 f. 



SUFFICIENT REASON 319 

low and pitiful a condition this alleged universality and 
necessity may fall. Even the logical and mathematical prin- 
ples upon which the advocate of this extreme apriorism bases 
his claims may in certain cases show unmistakable signs of 
being " shaky " or of entirely giving way. 

And further, if the attempt be made to exalt either of the 
most primary principles of all human thinking to the place 
of an autocrat or irresponsible creator of cognitive judgments, 
and to hypostasize either of them as a formula representative 
of the complete being of the world, the reward for the attempt 
is not a knowledge of Reality, but a delusive mistaking of 
formal abstractions for the real content of things. In the 
name of the " Principle of Identity " the innermost essence 
of Reality has often enough been proclaimed as Absolute, 
changeless Being, whose conception cannot be constructed 
further without self-destruction. A = A is, indeed, a prop- 
osition which appears to have a demonstrated simplicity and 
clearness; or rather, an indisputable a priori character which 
puts it beyond all need of demonstration. But A = A is 
nothing but an empty, meaningless symbol, to which no 
known reality corresponds or ever can be conceived of as 
corresponding. In our self-consciousness, where all cognition 
begins, and to which it ever returns for fresh sources of a 
vitally renewing kind, the abolition of the fundamental oppo- 
sition between subject and object is a return to nescience so 
complete as to be quite unable to state itself even in negative 
form. And when the doctors of philosophy have put to sleep, 
or quite annulled, the living process of a self-realizing Cosmos, 
they can never restore what is gone by uttering over the 
corpse incantations in the name of a mystical Principle of 
Identity. Moreover, every concrete application of this prin- 
ciple must be made only on grounds of actual cognitive judg- 
ments ; and critical examination must test each application. 
For the processes of thinking and the actual connections of 
Reality cannot be, off-hand and without a sceptical and 
critical process, identified. 



320 SUFFICIENT REASON 

The same cautions must be observed with regard to the 
Principle of Sufficient Reason, objectively applied as a so- 
called universal law of causality. The abstract conception of 
causality is itself no ground of explanation ; there is no 
sufficient warrant for its being raised to the place of supreme 
adoration and hypostasized as embodying the whole essence 
of the really existent World. Especially inept is that pro- 
cess of reasoning which, after having based itself upon this 
very conception of causality, proceeds to divide the world 
of reality into two unrelated halves, two disconnected pro- 
cesses, that run on eternally as it were, side by side. 1 But 
without employing again the causal principle to connect 
together thoughts and things, we are never able to get one 
glimpse of a reason why the processes should be two rather than 
more, or even infinite in number ; or why thoughts and things 
should run parallel rather than at right angles ; or how out 
of this diversity of actually disconnected processes the unity 
of experience and the Unity of the World can come. Is it not 
an astonishing outcome of the tenderness shown this principle 
of sufficient reason, as employed for the interpretation of 
Reality, that it should be so hardened as to become unable to 
depart from one of these two lines of process and thus bind 
together into one the physical and the psychical World ? But 
no less surprising and self contradictory is the outcome of 
every attempt to vindicate an absolute logico-mathematical 
necessity for the really Existent, in the name of the principle 
of sufficient reason or of its objective correlate, the principle 
of causality. The suppositions of eternally unchanging uni- 
formity of mass, or of force, and of complete similarity of 
conditions, with rigid bonds of law binding together the 
entire mechanism, are abstractions which are neither derived 
from the sum-total of experience, nor do they accord with 
this sum-total. 

But the result of a critical examination of the principles of 

1 As, for example, Paulsen does ; Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 87 f . 



SUFFICIENT REASON 321 

^identity and sufficient reason is not such as to let the entire 
structure of human knowledge dissolve, at this point, in the 
caustic of hopeless contradictions, or disappear in the soft 
mists of an equally hopeless agnosticism. The mind of man 
retains its undying confidence in the possibility, by reasoning 
processes, of gaining an increasingly large and true cognition 
of Reality. It will bear chastening, but it will not lie down in 
despair. And it need not do this in order to vindicate its 
confidence in the rationality and validity of its own procedure. 
For Causality is itself no invincible bond thaU in a quasi-exter- 
nal way, seizes hold of things and forces them into a Unity. 
Neither is it necessary to go out of experience to realize that 
causal nexus, in the confidence of which our reasoning about 
things continually proceeds. This nexus is, after all, when 
profoundly inspected and analyzed by critical reflection, not 
so much like the external connections of a machine, which 
lay themselves bare before the eye of sense, as it is like the 
interiorly recognized and felt connections of a conscious and 
reasoning Self. 

This, then, is the conception which is suggested as the pos- 
tulated truth of the nature of the Being of the World. It is, 
after the analogy of the Life of a Self, striving forward to a 
more and more complete self-realization under the consciously 
accepted motif of immanent Ideas. This conception, we say, 
is suggested. It appears as the sleeping postulate whose pres- 
ence and potency must be recognized if we would understand 
and validate the employment of ratiocination for the increase 
of our knowledge of the World. The postulate implies, (1) 
some sort of unitary Being for this really Existent ; (2) that 
this Being is Will ; (3) that the differentiation of the activity 
of this Will, and the connection of the differentiated " mo- 
menta," — the separate beings of the world, — is teleological 
and rational, like that of our own Self. But it is the task 
of metaphysics to criticise and develop such statements as 
these. 

21 



CHAPTER XI 

EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 

THAT man can, in no manner and under no conceivable 
circumstances, transcend his own experience is custom- 
arily thought to be a proposition so self-evident as to stand in 
need of neither argument nor explanation. But the history 
of the controversies which have raged for centuries between 
extreme empiricists and their opponents shows clearly enough 
that explanation, at least, is imperatively demanded for the 
proposition itself. Indeed, the shifting meanings, which are 
given by the contestants to such terms as " experience," " cog- 
nition," " the transcendent," etc., and to the concepts of rela- 
tion embodied in the various judgments that affirm or deny 
the possibility of effecting a union between these terms, are 
the most significant thing in the greater part of the contro- 
versy. It is important, then, for every attempt at an episte- 
mology to raise such questions as the following : What is to be 
understood by the term, " experience " ? What is the relation 
of knowledge to experience ? and, What would it be to tran- 
scend experience by cognition, or in some other way, if only 
such a thing could be conceived of as possible ? 

The history of epistemological discussion discloses a sur- 
prising characteristic group or set of fallacies. They are of 
such an order as to awaken one's shame and distrust respect- 
ing the power of the human intellect to treat fairly its own 
most familiar modes of activity. For the most part, they 
seem to be connected with the misapplication of a single, 
easily apprehensible figure of speech. Empiricists generally, 



EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 323 

and their opponents quite too frequently, argue about " Ex- 
perience" as though it were actually some material thing, 
having a fixed or a changeable and expansive area, as spread 
out in space. Certainly, if experience is like a circle which 
includes only what is within its own area and by virtue of its 
very nature excludes all else, then, by defining experience in- 
clusively enough, the necessity of its being absolutely exclusive 
of what transcends its own limits may easily be shown. Or, to 
bring up again the figure of speech which Kant so effectively 
employed : — and now experience is an island, surrounded by 
a boundless ocean of impenetrable mists and fogs. Moreover, 
since this island has its circuit eternally fixed by the unchang- 
ing laws of pure understanding, it can never make advances 
into the surrounding ocean. And since the critical philosophy 
lias made a finality of the exploration of this island, all its 
inhabitants should cease to delude themselves with the hope 
of some day passing beyond its rocky coast-lines. Only, since 
they are possessed of reason as well as of understanding, they 
will doubtless keep on turning the spy-glass of an " illusory 
logic " toward the paradise over-seas, where God, Freedom, 
and Immortality are imagined to be, and whence comes the 
attractive, siren-like song of the transcendent ideas. Even 
Kant will allow — nay ! he will by and by demonstrate — 
the necessity of a faith which shall overreach the limits so 
inexorably fixed by experience to human scientific and spec- 
ulative cognition. 

Now, by all the most primary concepts of geometry, it is 
forbidden that circles, laid out on flat surfaces, shall include 
and exclude at one and the same time. For is not the very defi- 
nition of a circle, — so much of space only as is included within 
a curved line that is drawn through points equidistant from a 
central point, until it returns upon itself? And circles con- 
structed according to the modern " higher geometry," with 
their inconceivable qualities contradictory of the plainest re- 
quirements of the mind that imagines a la Euclid, may fitly 



324 EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 

be denied all likeness to " experience." For is not experience 
supposed to have something to do with actual existences ? And 
actual circles are never known to behave in any such contra- 
dictory fashion. Islands, too, although exceedingly change- 
able as to boundaries in certain cases, and sometimes even 
disappearing in the depths of their surrounding ocean or ris- 
ing into mid-air on the wings of submarine volcanic forces, do 
not include and exclude the same territory at one and the 
same time. Thus far, at least, they submit to the funda- 
mental principle of identity ; and if they ever change the 
limits of their territory, they do this in accordance with the 
principle of sufficient reason. 

But, after all, is the total experience of man precisely like 
a geometrically correct circle, or like an island with fixed 
boundaries ? Is it even enough like either to allow us to pro- 
claim, as a self-evident proposition, that it cannot include and 
exclude at one and the same time ? May it not, at least, in- 
clude in one sense what it excludes in another sense of these 
two words ? 

Doubtless, the origin and nature of all language is such 
that, even when we are employing terms current among think- 
ers acquainted with the very highest critical philosophy, the 
spatial and " thing-like " meaning of words is exceedingly in- 
fluential. It would be awkward, indeed, and we fear practi- 
cally useless, to attempt so to express ourselves on this subject 
as to escape all influence from this meaning; indeed, the 
meaning itself reveals a considerable number of important 
truths connected with the philosophy of knowledge. For the 
present, then, we shall continue to employ words which carry 
with them the influences inseparable from the figure of speech 
they embody. In succeeding chapters, where the attempt 
will be made to analyze more critically and in detail the con- 
clusions somewhat crudely and plumply affirmed in this chap- 
ter, other terms may be substituted that are better adapted, 
perhaps, to reveal the real truth of the case. But here our 



EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 325 

main purpose is simply to expose the problem, and the char- 
acteristic fallacies which have so frequently embarrassed its 
solution. Preserving the same language, with its figurative 
meanings, we affirm, then : Hoivever extensive in its meaning 
we make this word, " Experience" critical examination shows 
that experience is always and necessarily transcended by cog- 
nition. The answer to the question whether man can trans- 
cend his own experience is this : If man did not transcend his 
own experience, he could, as a man, have no cognitive expe- 
rience. This is what makes some of our experience rational, — 
namely, that it does, in a peculiar manner and to a most mar- 
vellous extent, always transcend itself. Indeed, the immanent 
and the transcendent, the inclusive and the exclusive, the 
merely subjective and the trans-subjective, the mental and the 
extra-mental, are not contradictory of each other, or opposed 
to each other in the facts of human knowledge. The rather 
must it be recognized that what corresponds to both these 
classes of terms equally belongs to, and is equally necessary 
to, the explanation of the very concept of experience. 

For let this concept of experience be examined with a view 
to see what it necessarily implies. In beginning the examina- 
tion, the term may be considered in its widest possible signi- 
fication. When employing the word " Experience " in its most 
inclusive meaning, we are wont to think under it everything 
in any way concerned with human consciousness, — whether 
as fact, condition, law, or implicate. But in forming the very 
conception of itself, experience has already transcended itself. 
The fact of consciousness — or rather, consciousness considered 
as fact, as being just what it here-and-now is for me, and no 
other — is, from one point of view, all that there ever is of 
my present actual experience. Let this fact be exalted to the 
highest pitch of excellence, extended so as to embrace the 
widest possible content, and suffused with the intensest and 
most potent objective conviction, still it is a fact of conscious- 
ness — here, and now, and mine — and no more. The next 



326 EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 

fact of consciousness will, in its turn, be the sum-total of my 
actual experience regarded as an empirically indisputable fact ; 
and so will the next, and the next, as long as the stream of 
consciousness I call myself continues to flow. And as to the 
" experience of the race," so long as the same point of view is 
maintained, it is but a fact of my imagination — another fact 
absorbing the entire experience of an individual consciousness, 
somewhere and at some definite time. Now, from the point 
of view of the advocate of empiricism, strictly limited and 
consistently retained, this is all that can ever be made out of 
the concept of experience. But this is not at all the concept 
of experience as formed and contended for by the empiricist ; 
and he is as quick as any one to see, when it comes his turn 
of advantage, that such a concept is self-contradictory and 
obviously and scandalously absurd. For such a concept of 
experience can not so frame and hold itself together as to 
maintain its integrity for a moment in the field of philosophical 
contention. Even the concept of ghosts has more of flesh- 
and-blood reality, and is better worth fighting for than is such 
a concept as this. For, in truth, to say " concept" — just that 
and nothing more — implies the continuity of the conceiving 
subject, some sort of continuity and conditionated existence 
for things, and some standard of judgment and authority in 
other conceiving subjects. But here is a mighty host of tran- 
scendent beings already intrenched in the empiricist's camp. 1 
No class of men, among psychologists or philosophers, in- 
sists more upon carefully observing and studying the con- 
ditions of experience than do the empiricists themselves. 
Ordinarily, too, the particular kind of conditions which they 
think it best worth while to study are of the most recondite 
and unapproachable kind. With the critical epistemology of 
Kant and the neo-Kantians, they will have nothing to do ; 

1 For a concrete instance of the desperate condition to which such empiricism 
reduces one, see the examination of M. Flournoy's case, in Philosophy of Mind, 
pp. 28 f. 



EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 327 

indeed, they cherish for it secretly, if not openly, no little 
contempt. As to the uncritical apriorism of Hegel and the 
neo-Hegelians, they are quite unable to speak contemptuously 
enough. As empiricists, they propose to confine themselves, 
and all of us, to a study of experience, as actual matter of 
observable fact and as reposing upon matter-of-fact condi- 
tions. 1 These conditions, however, are only such as physio- 
logical and physical science can handle and verify ; they 
consist in antecedent and concomitant brain-states, or in 
other physical changes which, flowing in upon man's stream 
of consciousness, if not wholly accountable for its existence 
as a conscious stream, determine what the factors and the 
direction of it all shall be. Who does not see, however, that 
the very assumption of any sort of conditions for our experi- 
ence, which are not present in the concrete and actual ex- 
periences as conscious facts, shows the mind to itself as already, 
transcending experience ? Let no one fail at this crucial point 
to comprehend the question at issue and the significance for 
its answer, of the procedure of every mind, whether it be com- 
mitted to the baldest empiricism or to the most high-and-dry 
apriorism. This question does not refer to the admissibility 
or adequacy of any particular order or kind of the conditions 
of experience. The question refers rather to the significance 
and validity of the assumption that the present experience has 
any conditions at all. That some of the conditions of human 
experience are physiological and physical, or even that all of 
them are such, may be admitted by the opponent of a con- 
sistent empiricism as cheerfully and safely as by its most 
determined advocate. No psychoses without antecedent or 
concomitant brain-states ; or all psychoses are only epi- 
phenomena, mere successive steam-clouds " thrown off " from 
and floating above the brain, — if you now will. For this is 

1 Among other significant failures due to the effort to get the necessary as- 
sumptions while refusing to reckon with their origin or significance, see Pro- 
fessor Fullerton's Address, Psychological Review, January, 1897. 



328 EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 

not the question at issue ; namely, What are the most impor- 
tant and effective conditions of human experience ? The 
question is rather : Why does the concept of experience, for 
all men, itself include conditions that transcend the individual 
experience ? Why is the concept of an unconditioned experi- 
ence, of an experience containing all its grounds within itself, 
an absurd and even impossible affair for the human mind to 
attempt to contemplate ? 

Of course, it may at once be claimed, and correctly, that 
these assumed conditions of every present experience, as facts 
of consciousness, have in some form themselves previously 
been matters of present cognitive experience. Last of all 
men would the most thorough empiricists be, to place the 
conditions of experience where they could themselves, in no 
sort, be verified by experience. In the particular case under 
consideration, some of our past experiences have themselves 
consisted of conscious facts appertaining to the brain and' to 
its states, and to the other physiological and physical condi- 
tions of human experience. Fortunately, moreover, not a few 
of these conditions admit of being repeatedly observed under 
such circumstances as to provide checks for mistaken specu- 
lative inferences ; some of them admit of frequent or occa- 
sional experimental determination. So that the inference 
of other conditions, which are not obviously implicated in the 
presetit experience, is very far from being an effort or a 
claim to transcend all experience. On the contrary, it is 
sticking fast by the lines, and dealing with the facts, of ex- 
perience only : it is mental consistency within the fixed lines 
of our empirical destiny. 

Now, such a view is, we suspect, not really all that, or pre- 
cisely what, the empiricist originally meant when he proclaimed 
his confidence in brain-states as affording the conditions of this 
and of all human conscious experience. It is likely that no 
one would more quickly resent the charge of proclaiming a 
theory of materialism, or of psycho-physical parallelism, or 



EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 329 

indeed any other theory merely in the interests of his own 
mental consistency. The truth is, that the epistemological 
view of his own meaning and intention comes to such a thinker 
only when he finds himself driven into a corner by the pres- 
sure of questions for an explanation of experience itself in a 
thorough-going empirical way. Really he means that an 
actual system of things, a brain, etc., most of which never 
has got, and never will get, into his own or any other man's 
experience, must be assumed in order to explain every fact 
of his experience in particular, and in general, all human 
experience. But this is just the meaning upon which we are 
insisting at the present time. And the same searching 
question recurs : Why is a conditionless experience absurd ? 
Why does experience, in order to explain itself, need to tran- 
scend itself as mere fact? And if the very nature of experi- 
ence is such as to render it incapable of realization as a mere 
fact, tormented with the actual limits set for it and unable to 
conceive of itself without transcending itself, why should we 
compare it to a closed circle or to an island in an impenetrable 
ocean ? If one must employ spatial and " thing-like " figures 
of speech, would not one speak truer to the facts if one said : 
The very nature of experience is perpetually to transcend 
itself, both for its own explanation and for its fuller realiza- 
tion ? In cognition always, as soon as we inquire critically 
into its grounds and its significance, we see the mind leaping 
beyond its present limits into the real world that is unseen 
and unrecognized by any present act of consciousness. 

Suppose, now, that the effort be made to construct a sci- 
entifically defensible conception of the conditions of all human 
experience, both that of the entire race of men now in ex- 
istence and also that of the race of men (and, if it please 
you, of their ape-like ancestors) since its first origins upon 
the face of the earth. Can this effort be made in any wise 
successful without freely bringing what is properly trans- 
cendent within the circle ; or without overleaping the circle, 



330 EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 

and so, by some act of belief, inference, or postulate, reach- 
ing the embrace of the transcendent ? By no manner of 
means. And the more bold in the use of its resources, and 
rich in content, the scientific treatment of man's nature and 
history becomes, the more does the concept of human experi- 
ence, taken as a totality, include factors, faiths, inferences, 
postulates, which transcend all present experience. The cry 
of physics to beware of metaphysics, and the wailing of an- 
thropology to free itself from ontology, have their answer in 
the facts of science as dependent upon the nature of all knowl- 
edge. There is no science of physics without metaphysics ; 
there is no anthropology without ontology. A purely " em- 
pirical " science is not a ne-plus~ultra but a nonentity and an 
absurdity. For science itself consists in the discovery some- 
how of the " conditions " upon which the present facts of ex- 
perience may reasonably be supposed to have come to be 
facts at all ; nor is the most scientific concept of experience 
itself different as respects its origin, character, or obligations, 
to the transcendent. Tracing this concept steadily backward 
and outward, we are obliged, in the interests of that very 
science which boasts itself to be founded only upon experi- 
ence, to pursue the path of the following assumption : My 
present experience, as a fact, has its conditions lying outside 
of itself. These conditions are partly in my bodily organism, 
and, especially in that part of it of which I have had no ex- 
perience, — in my brain and central nervous system. They 
are also, partly, in my past mental operations as productive 
of tendencies and habits ; and these conditions, too, very 
largely lie outside of any experience which I have ever had 
or can ever hope to have. What is true of my present ex- 
perience is emphatically true of the totality of my experi- 
ence. Its conditions are physical, and belong to the great 
world of nature which lies outside my experience ; they are 
also biological and sociological, and so dependent not only 
upon the collective experience of the race but also upon many 



EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 331 

conditions of which this collective experience has afforded no 
mental representation to any member of the race. This col- 
lective experience of the race, together with all its concom- 
itant conditions, whether physical or psychical, and with 
its so-called laws of heredity and variation and of modify- 
ing relations to environment, etc., is still further scientifically 
conceived of only as having conditions which transcend itself. 
And no one is more forward and confident in the matter of 
transcending present facts (this charmed circle of human 
experience) than is the ardent defender of the mental propri- 
ety of sticking fast by the facts. But he evinces on that 
account the more forcibly the truth of our position : The 
concept of experience itself cannot be framed without includ- 
ing within itself, " momenta " which transcend its bounds. 
In other words, what sets out to be a purely empirical theory, 
with reference to the nature of experience, cannot explain 
itself without passing out of, and so confuting, itself. 

Shall we, then, admit this self-contradictory nature of all 
experience in proof of the fact that we cannot critically ex- 
amine and so know what we are really about in having cog- 
nitive experience without discovering how much actually 
enters into it, of blind inference, of unexplained faith, of pos- 
tulating of unexperienced entities, etc. ? Precisely so, for this 
is, in part, what we desired to make clear. But only in 
part. The real trouble with the advocate of an empiricism 
which tries to conceive of human experience as a closed cir- 
cle, from which the transcendent is forever excluded, is this : 
he does not understand himself. He would have a sci- 
ence, if he had his own way epistemologically, which involved 
no real thinking and no completed perception or self-con- 
sciousness, — not science at all, but scarcely a logically con- 
sistent dream, or a vision of an insane mind. 1 But if " science " 

1 As Volkelt truly says (Erfahrung und Denken, p. 75, note) in criticism of 
Goring, "one of the most radical of the defenders of pure experience" (see 
his articles in the Vierteljahrsschrift fur wissenschaftliche Philosophie ; 1877, iv., 



332 EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 

means knowledge, then it is necessarily not of the merely 
subjective, but of the trans-subjective, too. And the logically 
established system of existing beings, actual forces, and real 
relations, conceived of as occurring in time and space, and so 
forming necessary conditions of all human experience, is the 
transcendent. Modern empirical science is certainly far 
enough from reducing all this to the " trans-subjective mini- 
mum" as a sort of postulated plus lying outside of experience. 
On the contrary, it goes on heaping up its tremendous de- 
mands upon faith to the verge of a most irrational credulity, 
and postulating its own grounds in a speculative scheme of 
entities whose very nature is fast reaching the utmost stretch 
of imagination this side the grotesque and the absurd. Who 
would not undertake to remain within the limits of experi- 
ence and believe in angels rather than in ether ; in God rather 
than in atoms ; and in the history of his Kingdom as a 
divine self-revelation rather than in the physicist's or biolo- 
gist's purely mechanical process of evolution ? But why should 
students of science express themselves as though Kant had 
never written, or critical philosophy exposed the nakedness 
of their own most cherished metaphysics ? Why should they 
not rather see that, if thinking enters into experience to con- 
vert it into a system of cognitions, experience must somehow 
involve the transcendent ? For thinking, as a function, when 
it demands assent to itself as valid for reality, is eo ipso a 
postulating of what is not concrete matter-of-fact experience. 
The concept of experience which was presented by the 
great critic and destroyer of empiricism is itself, however, 
inconsistent and inadequate. The "island" of Kant is as 
mythical as is the circle of the modern empiricist. For let it 
be supposed that universal objective validity is imparted to 
experience only because all experience comes under the con- 

352 f., and 1878, i., 108, 114). in this meaning of the word, " I may twist and turn 
experience as I will, and yet I can never get anything else out of it alone, ex- 
cept that it shows to me processes in my own consciousness." 



EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 333 

structive or regulative influence of the a priori, or constitu- 
tional forms of the functioning of understanding; and that 
from this critical discovery the conclusion is drawn of man's 
inability to reach the transcendent. Experience is now, in- 
deed, rendered objective; and sure tests are supplied by 
which to discriminate between dreams and cognitions. Now 
the limits of knowledge, although no longer set by sense, but 
by the unchanging and necessary laws of human intellectual 
faculty, are all the more close-fitting and irremovable. Em- 
piricism is forever rendered hors du combat ; and to the object 
of our thought is given, so that it can never be taken away, a 
" phenomenal reality." But a real reality — if one may be 
pardoned for finding one's self forced to a coinage of such 
uncouth inscription — lies still beyond all limits of experi- 
ence ; nor are these limits the less, but rather the more in- 
flexible, because they now have their source in the intellect 
itself rather than in any of the physical or biological condi- 
tions of sensuous intuition. How now, indeed, shall this 
caged bird, " knowledge," escape from its cage " experience " ? 
— since the material of the cage is the more impassable and 
entangling because invisible to the prisoner. 

We maintain that the concept of experience which empha- 
sizes its internal laws rather than its exterior conditions, 
is equally inadequate, quite as self-contradictory and absurd 
as the concept of the empiricist. For how am I — or if I 
am too poor a thinker, how is the stalwart critic Kant — 
to know, or even to conceive of " laws " as a priori forms of 
experience, without transcending experience ? The impossi- 
bility is so patent as scarcely to need detailed exposure. 
Only by reflection can the mind form any conception of itself 
as subject to laws set fast in its own constitution. Laws 
are only the more or less frequently repeated and uniform 
modes of the behavior of things. In this case the particular 
thing, upon whose customary modes of behavior reflection is 
required, is the Self as consciously known to itself. But how 



?34 EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 

large an amount of the transcendent (the " trans-subjective 
minimum ") is involved in the origin and growth of the cogni- 
tion of Self has already been made the principal subject of our 
epistemological inquiry. A critical science of mind, compe- 
tent to speak of " laws," etc., cannot escape the necessity of 
including at least this trans-subjective minimum in its con- 
ception of human experience. 

But, indeed, the Kantian conception of experience included 
much more. For it was not Ms experience, not the experience 
of the local celebrity of the little town of Konigsberg, which 
Kant thought of as giving laws to itself. This profound and 
patient thinker attempted to discern the immutable laws of 
all human experience, the very God-given or otherwise orig- 
inally fixed constitution under which all human selves have 
done, are doing, and will continue to do, their work of thinking 
and cognizing one another and all external things. But how 
can such a conception be framed unless experience is of itself 
inclusive, rather than exclusive, of the transcendent ? 

Here, again, it is vain and quite misses the true significance 
of the question to reply that, after all, Kant was only ex- 
plaining his own experience in terms derived from itself. 
For in this case, too, the original inquiry recurs, and with 
redoubled force : Whence comes the impulse and the felt ne- 
cessity thus to explain my experience by appeal to a standard 
of universal authority ? And how does it happen that this 
standard, not only is found, but in order to explain my 
experience must be found, in the existence of a system of 
interrelated beings whose minds eternally and necessarily 
function as I discover my own mind to function ? The only 
possible answer to these questions involves an inference, a 
postulate, a faith, that transcends all experience in order to 
explain, to control, and to validate it all. For knoivledge, as 
such and essentially considered, implies the existence of uni- 
versal rational consciousness, as an objective standard of truth. 
The " laws " of intellect can no more be accounted for than 



EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 335 

can its conditions, without the ontological assumption of 
other intellect which can never come into my experience 
except as my experience transcends what are, strictly speak- 
ing, its own bounds. 

It is time, however, to drop from our argument the figure 
of speech that has hitherto been employed in order to correct 
the very fallacies to which it so persistently gives rise. Cer- 
tainly enough, I cannot know without knowing. I cannot 
know aught that is not somehow implicate — either as fact, 
condition, law, or entity — in my experience. But these 
truths do not at all warrant the critic in regarding experience 
as constructed after the pattern of a closed circle, or of an 
island with rocky barriers raised toward an ocean of impene- 
trable fog and mist. For the real relations of experience to 
the transcendent are not of this order. The rather, if we 
preserve the figure of speech, must the truth be expressed by 
representing the mind, in all its cognitive activity, as perpet- 
ually leaping beyond itself, and somehow transcending its 
own circuits by discovering within them the potent presence 
of other-being than its self-closed Self. Or, if we prefer the 
Kantian figure of speech, we must regard each inhabitant of 
the before-mentioned island as finding that the surrounding 
fog and mist lift upward and sweep backward, and as discov- 
ering in the ocean only another and larger home for his own 
cognitive soul. For the true meaning of both figures of 
speech is this : without actually reaching and grasping, by all 
those potencies of the soul which cognition involves, the real 
conditions, universal laws, and related entities of the Self 
and of Things, toe cannot even form the concept of human 
experience. What these conditions are, psychology and epis- 
temology unite to discover, describe, and criticise. What 
these laws are — how they arise and get validity of applica- 
tion, and what we mean by them — the two chapters preced- 
ing this have already partially discussed. Further discussion 
will bring before us the nature of Truth and Error, the alleged 



336 EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 

Antinomies of Reason, and the Limits and Justification of 
Scepticism, of Agnosticism, and of Criticism in Epistemology. 
The ontological Implicates are now about to be examined. 

We pause a moment to snatch a practical suggestion from 
this study for an epistemological theory. It seems that he who 
would be so cautious about knowledge as not to trust himself 
beyond the strictest limits of his own little mental domain, 
may end by becoming the most credulous and childish of men. 
To think that " cock-sure " confidence in empirical science 
alone should end in complete despair of all science ! To find 
that, when we hedge in so carefully our laboratory, and light 
it with the latest electrical apparatus of the highest candle- 
power, it should still, to the spiritually enlightened eyes, seem 
full of fanciful sprites, thick with the ghosts of a metaphysics 
which nineteenth-century positivism and agnosticism have 
pledged themselves to expel ! Shall we then steal, silent and 
despairing, into the dark forests of a total agnosticism, or 
run shrieking to the mad-house where untamed imagination 
and irrational feeling hold their riotous sway ; or shall we 
set our teeth and button up well our overcoats against the 
cold and go about our business, resolutely believing what we 
know to be untrue ? Perhaps we may find a yet " more 
excellent way." For it may be that faith and intellect, 
feeling and thinking and willing, can all be combined into a 
right attitude of our cognitive souls toward truth, life, and 
all Reality. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

HITHERTO we have been occupied with a critical exam- 
ination of human cognition, — its nature, laws, and 
grounds, — with a view to test the validity of its claim to be a 
system of mental representation framed and connected after 
the pattern of a really existent World. In other words, we 
have sought guaranties for Knowledge in general ; and the 
search has been conducted in the most presuppositionless way 
possible. It is now time to reverse the terms of inquiry and 
to ask ourselves : What does human knowledge guarantee ? 
What sort of Reality is validated for all men, in the un- 
changing nature, necessary laws, and fundamental grounds 
of their own cognitive activity ? Any detailed answer to these 
questions would furnish an elaborate system of ontology, a 
metaphysical structure in the narrower meaning of the word 
" metaphysics." But epistemological discussion aims at ruling 
out ontology so far as the process of exclusion is possible, or, 
at most, convenient. The truth of the admission made early 
in our discussion has been growing constantly more apparent ; 
the philosophy of Knowledge and the philosophy of Reality, 
epistemology and ontology, offer problems that cannot be 
kept wholly apart; for these problems are only different 
aspects or stages of one and the same problem. 

No one need fear, however, that the standpoint of free 
criticism is now wholly to be abandoned, or that a system of 
ontological metaphysics is about to be introduced under pre- 

22 



338 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

tence of having already sufficiently guaranteed the power of 
our cognitive faculties to construct such a system. This task 
we wish, as far as possible, to reserve for another time. For 
the proposed change, in our point of view, is here introduced 
in the interests of the thoroughness of our criticism. This 
will appear clearly as soon as the bearing of the conclusions 
already reached upon the further pursuit of epistemological 
problems is considered. It has been shown by a searching 
criticism of the very act of cognition — of that fundamental 
datum, " I know," in which the problem of epistemology orig- 
inates — that no guaranty of a character external to the 
act itself can possibly be produced. All the validity that 
knowledge can attain, theoretically, consists in its being what 
it actually is, namely, knowledge, and not a mere having of 
states of consciousness, of whatever sort or howsoever 
arranged and combined. But, then, it has also been shown 
that knowledge, ultimately considered, validates itself ; and 
that it does this in such a way as to leave nothing further to 
be desired or even to be conceived of as possible. It does this 
so as to guarantee, for the cognizing Self, its own real existence 
and nature as a Self ; and so as also to guarantee that other 
beings, actually known as not-selves, exist, and what they 
are ; but this latter, only if we may accept as valid the 
assumption that things share in the qualifications which the 
Self knows itself to possess. Now, plainly, it is a legitimate 
and indispensable extension of the epistemological doctrine 
already established, when we enter a little way into the fur- 
ther critical examination of these qualifications themselves. 
This, then, is the problem now before us. What sort of a 
being is guaranteed for the really existent World by our 
exercise of cognitive faculty in its own constitutional and 
supremely self-confident way ? What, in brief but more pre- 
cisely than they have hitherto been distinguished, are the 
Implicates of all Knowledge ? 

In answering this question, it is our aim to remain as cau- 



THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 339 

tious and even austere toward all claimants to a title to 
a-priority as we have all the while been. We are, indeed, 
the advocates of a certain " faith-philosophy, " and determined 
opponents of the unwarrantable Kantian separation of faith 
and knowledge ; but we are not unmindful of Schopenhauer's 
sarcasm as directed against Jacobi, " Who only has the tri- 
fling weakness that he takes all he learned and approved 
before his fifteenth year for inborn ideas of the human mind." 
Nor can Kant himself be cleared of the charge of multiplying 
unnecessarily the formal factors and laws necessary to give 
an account of the origin and nature of cognition. Let us aim, 
however, at moderation. It is not the farthest possible 
extension of ontological implicates of human knowledge 
which seems alluring just now ; it is rather the critical esti- 
mate of what has been called the " trans-subjective minimum." 
Such implicates as appear of this order will certainly be 
amply able to bear those final attacks of scepticism and 
agnosticism to which they will then be subjected. 

That the trans-subjective — some being other than the here- 
and-now being of the state of consciousness, objectively de- 
termined — is implicated in every concrete act of cognition, has 
been found to be both postulated and proved, or evinced by all 
actual examples. On the one hand, phenomenalism belongs to 
the very nature of knowledge ; for " we can cognize any object 
only as it manifests itself in our consciousness, or as it appears 
to us to be." On the other hand, the ontological nature of 
knowledge is equally apparent : it is even much more appar- 
ent ; for it is the peculiarity of cognition, that what is not con- 
sciousness, what transcends the mental act of representation, 
appears in consciousness as inseparable from this act. The 
critical doctrine of the ontological implicates of knowledge is, 
therefore, a necessary part of the theory of knowledge. This 
doctrine may be established in the form of an attempted 
answer to a problem ; and to borrow from mathematics a 
figure of speech, the nature of this problem may be sugges- 



340 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

tively expressed in the following way : What is the value of 
the X (the real Being) which is actually found implicate in 
every act of knowledge ? 

Students of Kant are well aware that he vacillated and gave 
different and doubtful answers to the ontological problem. In 
a general way he attempted its answer in terms of a concep- 
tion answering to the words " Ding-an-sich" or " G-egenstdnde 
uberhaupt " (" Thing-in-itself," or " Objects in general " and 
not specifically determined as concrete objects of actual cog- 
nition). But the Kantian conception of " Thing-in-itself " 
admits of no satisfactory description ; neither can it be made 
to agree with the terms of the fundamental and unassailable 
formula, " I know," as this formula asserts and vindicates 
itself in every actual performance of the faculty of cognition. 
No negative and merely limiting conception can be substi- 
tuted for the X of the problem, in such a way as to solve the 
difficulties which the X of actual experience offers. The 
being of the X of experience is not an abstraction ; nor is it 
a bare so-called " act-of-positing," or a mere law of intellect 
functioning under the categories of substantiality and caus- 
ality. The refutation which every cognitive experience brings 
against this interpretation of the Kantian formula has already 
been sufficiently provided. In our cognitive experience, the 
reality, X, does not stand as the hypostasis of a limitation, 
actually experienced by the intellect in every attempt to 
transcend its constitutional limits. 

What Kant (especially in the first edition of the " Critique 
of Pure Reason ") attempted to show as true of the transcen- 
dent reality imagined to be in consciousness was true only of 
Kant's own imagining and of its abstract and unreal product. 
For there is an unmistakable fallacy involved in converting 
the proposition " All objective cognition has its source in our 
mental representations " into the proposition " All objective 
cognition consists of our mental representations " as worked 
up into abstract forms by the intellect functioning according 



THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 341 

to its twelve constitutional forms, the so-called categories. 1 
This actual, concrete presence of the Being X, which cannot 
be resolved into a mere mental image, or into an abstraction, 
or into a dialectical process striking against a limit, like the 
nose of the blind fish in a small pool running itself into the mud, 
creates a demand, which epistemology must meet, for its own 
further explication. The trans-subjective is implicate in cog- 
nition ; it is implicate, of necessity, as positively there in all 
cognition. It is the transcendent Heal, 'present in experience, 
whenever the life of consciousness becomes a completed act of 
knowledge. 

Much has already been discovered, in the course of the fore- 
going critical discussion of knowledge, which is rightly 
alleged in answer to the question, What is the Being of X? 
But what has already been discovered only appears to make 
more desirable the task of gathering together the scattered 
remarks and weaving them, if possible, into some consistent 
whole. No other task is more important for the student of 
epistemology than that of examining further the character and 
determining the final value of this X; it is this task which 
builds for him the bridge upon which he may safely cross into 
the otherwise forbidden domain of ontology. To drop the 
figure of speech, the implicates of all knowledge must be dis- 
covered, critically expounded, and defended both circum- 
stantially and by harmonizing them with one another ; for only 
in this way can the theoretical interests of a philosophy of 
knowledge and the practical ends of conduct be attained and 
conserved. 

A preliminary inquiry, which is largely of a psychological 
character, but which has never received the attention it de- 
serves in psychological investigation and literature, fitly pre- 
cedes the criticism of the ontological implicates of human 
knowledge. This inquiry concerns the meaning of the word 
" implicate," in so far as it can properly be used in this con- 

1 Compare Wunclt, System der Philosophic, pp. 184 f. 



342 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

nection and authenticated by our actual experience. How is 
it, in fact, that Reality is caught and enfolded, so to speak, 
within the ever flowing stream of man's conscious life ? Here 
we are forced to raise again the sceptical question. No fact 
is surer than that this " stream of consciousness " is in a con- 
dition of perpetual flux. It is itself a series of conscious 
facts, each of which is particular, circumscribed, and always 
ascribable to some individual Ego, which is itself known as 
existing at all only while this same stream flows ever onward. 
In the largest conceivable significance of the words, " my ex- 
perience " must comprehend, within some particular portion 
of this flowing stream, all the Being that there is for me, — 
whether envisaged or ideated, or believed in, or postulated, or 
willed, or thought. Now the scepticism which follows from 
the reflective consideration of this truth is no new doctrine ; 
it is found in every age of the world and in every race that 
has reflected in any age. It appears as the doctrine of Maya 
in the ancient East, and as Spencerian agnosticism in the 
modern West. The facts will continue to breed such scepti- 
cism until the end of the last of all the ages. 

Just as certain is it, however, that certain facts exist, in- 
dubitable and eternally potent and effective, within the stream 
of consciousness, which check, limit, correct, and finally re- 
verse the tendencies to scepticism and to its termination in 
agnosticism or other doctrine of illusion. Such are all the 
facts of knowledge. These must, indeed, be received as facts 
in the flowing stream of consciousness, — as a part of the series 
which is a perpetual flux. But as facts, they must be received 
in their entirety and with their full, actual significance ; and 
when this is done, it becomes once for all obvious that, if facts 
of consciousness, as such, are always empirical, some facts of 
consciousness, as facts of knowledge, are always also " super- 
empirical.' , Or, to state the truth in terms made more ex- 
pressive by the discussion of the last chapter : It is quite 
impossible even to frame the conception of experience of the 



THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 343 

human sort, without introducing that which is for us extra- 
mentally real and which is actually related to us, and to itself, 
in a variety of effective relations. 

Somehow , therefore, Reality is indubitably known to be im- 
plicated in knowledge. But may we know " how," more par- 
ticularly, this implication takes effect ? Or, to change the 
form of the question : On what precise terms of conscious 
recognition, or appropriation, so to speak, is that which exists 
beyond consciousness discovered to be " part and parcel " of 
man's conscious and cognitive life ? Is it as " envisagement " 
or as " inference," as a leap upon the staff of the principle 
of sufficient reason, or as a climb by more considerate pro- 
cesses of ratiocination of a speculative order, as an act of 
faith in God, or a rational postulate, as a blind instinctive 
grasp, or a deed of free self-assertion, that I, the conscious 
subject, reach my object, the actually existent, which is be- 
yond my subjective state and which is not to be identified 
with my self-conscious Self ? The true answer to this in- 
quiry has already been given in detail. But in recalling 
that answer, it will be helpful to consider briefly how the 
same question has been answered by others who have dis- 
cussed it in more or less unprejudiced fashion, whether as a 
matter chiefly of psychological research or as a concernment 
of their philosophical systems. And here the significant fact 
of history is that the answer has been given in all the above- 
mentioned different forms ; and in each of them, over and 
over again. Upon this question the great critic of cognitive 
faculty is, as has already been said, vacillating and quite gen- 
erally unsatisfactory. When expressing himself naively, and 
yet under the influence of his extreme doctrine of the separ- 
ability of form and content as respects the dependence of 
knowledge on reality, Kant has only to say, " It is given." 
Elsewhere he would seem to wish that we should believe ; 
nothing is given but this — that " It " really is. That is to 
say, the bare Being of Xis received as an act of blind instinc- 



344 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

tive belief by the soul of man. Curiously enough, agnostic 
modern science is accustomed to declaring, first of all, " We 
know nothing as to what Matter really is ; " and then to pro- 
ceeding with volumes of instruction about this Unknown, and 
to speaking deferentially of it as a " that-which." Yet, again, 
Kant teaches that Reality is implicate in cognition as a nega- 
tive terminal of a process of abstraction, or as an " Idea " 
which is speculatively pursued by the employment of an illu- 
sory logic, in the mind's effort to unify the totality of its 
experience. 

On this one point Schopenhauer is undoubtedly much 
superior to Kant, because nearer the indubitable and common 
facts of experience. According to the former, the intellect 
proceeds upon the a priori principle of sufficient reason to 
a kind of envisagement, or seizure, of the concrete reality in 
the act of perception ; but of this act of the intellect no 
other account or vindication is possible. Reasoning, he thinks, 
never gives the knowledge of reality. Confusion and even 
self-contradiction, however, afflict the different statements of 
Schopenhauer in answer to this question : In what form of 
conscious experience is reality given to man ? Especially 
is this true of his doctrine of the will, as immediately appre- 
hended somehow without intellect's aid, and yet as the true 
essence and real being of the individual Self. In Hegel's 
system, reality is assumed to be known — both that it is 
and what it is — in a dialectical process which is, happily, 
the very opposite in character from the illusory dialectic of 
the Kantian epistemology ; this process is, when it under- 
stands itself, seen to be the complete and only truly Existent, 
as revealed in the consciousness of the individual man. 

Sully, James, and some other modern psychologists, have 
agreed rather with the thought of Augustine and the Early 
Church Fathers, and of the ecclesiastical writers of the 
Middle Ages. It is in the form of " belief " — not blind and 
irrational but, as of the very nature of reason and, perchance, 



THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 345 

leading the mind out toward the higher realities, whose fuller 
revelation awaits the attitude of trust — that reality finds 
entrance within the stream of human consciousness. Yet 
others (as, for example, Riehl) lay down the doctrine that, 
somehow, knowledge = thinking + reality ; but no clear infor- 
mation is afforded by them as to how the second member of 
the right-hand term of the equation gets any place in the 
equation at all. And, alas ! if we may regret the absence of 
opinions which would probably only add to the confusion, the 
multitude of minor writers on psychology pass the problem 
by in silence ; or perhaps they even think, by skilfully manip- 
ulating sensations and " fainter images " of sensations, and 
by combining them under psycho-physical formulas, to suc- 
ceed in hiding the fact that there is a problem after all. 
X is there, however; and, " How did it get there?" is a 
question which can neither be summarily dismissed nor over- 
looked by a generation scientifically disposed. 

The instructive thing to notice about all these views is 
that so long as they are positive, and yet confessedly partial, 
they are unanswerable. They meet with effective opposition 
only when they claim to be complete and so undertake to 
deny or to explain the facts upon which are founded rival 
views. The truth is that Reality is implicated in our cogni- 
tion in all these different ways. First, it is manifest that 
the operations of the intellect imply and actually involve a 
trans-subjective world of real things and real minds, stand- 
ing in actual relations. The cognitive judgment affirms it ; 
this is, indeed, precisely what it concretely and actually does 
in order to terminate in knowledge any process of thinking. 
All exercise of intellect implicates reality, in every effort to 
give an account to itself of its own origin and laws as an 
activity. Why should I judge the elm-tree to be over 
there ; and the star to be up yonder above my head ? No 
answer can be given, or suggested, for any question like 
this, except the answer : — Because it is, and is, in some true 



346 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

meaning of the words, not in my consciousness, but actually 
" over there " or " up yonder." The idealism which denies 
the truthfulness of such judgments, by so reducing their 
terms that they involve no reality other than the states of the 
judging subject, convicts the intellect of a fundamental ab- 
surdity. The intellect cannot, and will not, endure the 
insult of that. So, too, as has been abundantly shown, all 
conceptual knowledge gets validating only as it finds the 
relations of reality involved in the processes of conception 
and of reasoning. The last " grounds " of all intellectual 
endeavor are reached in the intellect's self -justification of 
this answer to its own everlasting, Why ? — Because it is so, 
and this is an end of the controversy. Moreover, this is all 
the truth there is in the Kantian or other agnostic doctrine 
that the X, the Real of cognition, is a negative and limiting 
concept. It is negative in that it positively denies the right 
and the expediency of further sceptical questioning; it is 
limiting because it forbids the vain effort to discover a 
merely abstract Bing-an-sich behind the reality which is 
actually involved in its own life. 

But, second, they are also clearly in the right who find all 
the most fundamental feelings of the soul committed to the 
tenure of reality as known by it. Nor are these feelings 
exhausted by speaking of them as " faith," or " belief," of 
a metaphysical or ontological kind. Feeling does, indeed, 
attach itself to the Xin such fashion that it cannot be re- 
moved or shaken off. I believe in my little real world, with 
all my might. It is indeed little as compared with that 
great world whose vague conception floats alluring before 
my mind, — beings physical and psychical, rank above rank, 
in manifold now inconceivable relations, and the great God 
in, and through, and over All. Now whether there be any 
such Great World or not, I may doubt. But rny world is 
very real to me ; and I believe in it with an invincible and 
passionate faith. For, as a real world, it has in it those 



THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 347 

with whom my most quick, vital, and supreme interests are 
concerned, — the things I own and hope to gain, and above 
all, the persons whom I fear, or hate, or trust, or love. And 
I do not wish it reduced to a dream ; even if it be a very 
logically consistent and scientifically constructed dream, 
after the pattern of an " If-this-is-so — then-that-is-so," but 
without anybody's knowing what is really so. The plain 
truth is that men generally, however sceptical in regard to 
a theory of knowledge or to an ontological system they may 
be, have all their feelings in view of what they regard as 
reality. That is to say, — Reality is somehow implicate in 
the feelings of man, as a cognitive soul. And if we recog- 
nize a peculiar form of ever-present and effective feeling, 
and call it a general " belief " in reality, a sort of ontological 
faith, convincing in every concrete act of cognition, we do 
not even then seem to be misstating the case. 

Nor can one fail to notice that it is almost impossible to 
express the belief of the cognitive soul in the reality of its 
own cognitive products without using words which turn the 
attention away from the merely affective aspects of experience. 
We will have it so ; and this is, partly, because we know 
that it would be quite useless to will otherwise ; for there 
is that " other-will" always to be reckoned with. To know 
the really existent World — the trans-subjective beings in 
their actual matter-of-fact relations — I must will, indeed ; 
but I cannot know this world purely as I will. Hoiv I 
know it, then, depends always upon felt and known relations 
between my will and that real X which is not-my-will, but 
which may be the will of some other Self or non-self Thing. 

Thus the question as to how Reality is implicate in con- 
sciousness, when consciousness takes on the form and assumes 
the rights of completed cognition, leads to the same truth 
which is reached by an analysis of the nature of cognition. 
It is not as an intellectual leap or well considered conclusion 
simply, nor as any kind of feeling merely, nor as a deed of 



348 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

will, more or less intelligent, alone ; but it is as all of these 
combined, that the real existence of this Self and of Things 
is implicate in cognition. Or, to invert the statement, the 
entire complex condition of the Subject, in the act of cogni- 
tion, involves and guarantees the Being of the trans-subjective 
existent. As envisaged, judged, postulated, believed in, felt, 
made object of active will and respondent in the form of 
reacting will, the Being of X is " given " to me, when I have 
that commerce with this X which is called knowledge. 

What, in particular, are the implicates found guaranteed 
by knowledge, — not as critically and speculatively treated 
so as to form a developed ontology, but as enumerated in 
the constitution of that " trans-subjective minimum " without 
which knowledge, as a universal experience, is unintelligible ? 
This question might be put into the language of critical phi- 
losophy, after the Kantian fashion, as follows : To what 
categories, in accordance with the very nature of all cogni- 
tion, must transcendent application be assigned ? Here the 
true position reverses the conclusions of Kant. Since all 
human knowledge has a certain necessary form, therefore a 
body of metaphysics, as ontology, is guaranteed as involved in 
this knowledge. For, without admitting certain ontological 
implicates, the most primary and universal of our cognitions 
are rendered absurd. Something as to the content of the 
really existent is interwoven inextricably with the conscious 
life of the cognitive subject. 

In explicating what of an ontological character is thus 
implicate in all the subjective processes of cognition, we 
come first upon the Being of the Self. No language can 
possibly state the absurdity of the agnosticism which, start- 
ing from the conscious facts of knowledge, attempts to deny 
reality to the self-conscious subject of knowledge. A hidden 
core of changeless existence, a " thing-like " substrate, at 
which self-consciousness can never get, and which must be 
supposed to lie dormant and incapable of ever making itself 



THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 349 

known beneath the so-called phenomenal Ego, may well 
enough be denied. There are, indeed, no facts of self-knowl- 
edge to guarantee a Kantian Ding-an-sichheit for the con- 
scious subject of those processes in which the facts consist. 
But that I am, that I was, and that I have been, — a con- 
scious, living Self, — are ontological propositions which are 
involved in all my present cognitive experience. Some sort 
of merely sensuous or ideational existence, some dream- 
like being with a certain show of shrewd intelligence, might 
be had without establishing a right to posit its own reality. 
Were this the sum-total of man's accredited experiences, his 
metaphysical postulates and beliefs would, no doubt, be ex- 
ceedingly meagre, — if, indeed, any postulates and beliefs 
arose, for critical examination, above the horizon of his 
conscious life. Beings that have only a sensuous and image- 
making experience have, probably, no " threshold " of an 
ontological consciousness. The metaphysical credo of the 
most intelligent of the brutes is, at longest, very brief. But 
the Self is a being that knows — itself, and various truths 
about other selves and, as well, about so-called material 
things. Moreover, the cognitive life of the Self is an histori- 
cal development. The knowledge of the individual man is 
a growth ; and each new cognition is dependently connected, 
by the principles of identity and of sufficient reason, and by 
acts of recognitive memory and of rational inference, with 
antecedent cognitions. Thus this Life implicates and guaran- 
tees its own real existence, as that of a Self developing 
according to the modes of its own constitution and in ac- 
cordance with immanent ideas peculiar to it, in a continuous 
life-history. 

If, moreover, the question arise, What is this Being of 
the Self, thus implicate and guaranteed in the unfolding life 
of cognition ? no answer can be given except that which 
points out the characteristic modes of doing and suffering 
known as belonging to the Self. They involve the " trans- 



350 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

subjective minimum" of every man's consciousness, so far 
as this consciousness has reference to his own reality. Fur- 
ther speculative inferences, or rational faiths and hopes and 
fears referring to the future being of the soul, may find 
ground for their standing in this primary and universal ontol- 
ogy of the Self. But all such inferences and faiths must 
validate their rights by doing battle with contesting theories, 
and with that spirit of doubt and of nescience which attacks 
our metaphysics of the phenomena of soul-life. Whoever 
confines his metaphysical views to the reflective and har- 
monious treatment of the universal and unchanging impli- 
cates of the life of cognition, may feel obliged, indeed, to 
move in a somewhat narrow circle. But within that circle 
he is impregnable. So far as self-cognition extends, the 
reality of Self — that it is and what it is — is guaranteed 
beyond the possibility of sceptical invasion. The metaphysics 
of mind is to this limited extent involved in all the mental 
experiences of a cognitive order. 1 So much and such Being 
I have, as I know myself to have had. What lies below or 
back of this may be matter of legitimate inference or of 
merely doubtful conjecture. What lies above, or in the 
future, must be got at through knowledge of the present 
and of the past, by reaching out, perchance, along the lines 
of persistent faiths and hopes. But what lies within this 
circle is known to be true; and "truth" means here, what 
truth always means to serious minds, — the mental repre- 
sentation that accords with the really existent. 

My real existence is an undeniable implicate of my self- 
knowledge ; and, indeed, of all my knowledge. This is a 
proposition from which all metaphysics takes its rise ; and to 
which it returns, as to an impregnable stronghold, as often as 
it is assailed, or to an all-illuminating centre, as often as it 

1 It is this ontological doctrine which, with only a few extensions beyond 
the sphere of the known, the author has tried to present in systematic form in his 
" Philosophy of Mind." 



THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 351 

finds itself astray. To deny the ontological significance of the 
primal fact, " I know," is to deny the possibility of all knowl- 
edge. For it is always 7 that know; and if this "I" lose 
itself, or become subjected to complete aberration of self-knowl- 
edge, then it becomes incapable of being longer the subject of 
any kind of knowledge. What is true for the individual is true 
for the race. Let the entire multitude of men be conceived 
of as losing this Being of the Self, — whether by complete 
aberration of self-consciousness in " double consciousness," or 
by attaining to an identification with " the Other " in " intel- 
lectual intuition," or by the enjoyment of Nirvana, or otherwise, 
— and, then, the knowledge of the race (practical, scientific, 
etc.) is gone. Some one must " come to himself " — signifi- 
cant phrase ! — before cognition can return to man. And if 
" that Other " lose his Being-for-Self , or be supposed never to 
have attained it, and thus share at the same time the sad fate 
of a race of men that have lost themselves ; then all cognition 
is gone. And what would remain ? Nothing of which one 
could even say : — 

" Jch habe Jceinen Namen 
Dafiir. Gefuhl ist A lies." 

We could then neither posit the existence of phenomena nor 
of noumena. The agnostic 6e6s apprjTos would then as surely 
vanish as would the idols of the South Seas. For feeling, 
imagination, thought, cannot of themselves guarantee the bare 
existence of the otherwise Unknown ; cognition must accom- 
plish this, by union of all the powers of the self-conscious 
mind. 

All attempt at a theory of knowledge — no matter how scep- 
tical or agnostic — starts from, and returns to, the firm centre 
of the Being of the self-known Self. Just as, however, this " I 
know" is not a rigid, fixed, and ready-made formula, but the 
characterization of a living and changing relation of subject 
and object, so is the Being of the Self, which is implicate in 
the formula, not a rigid, fixed, and ready-made existence. 



352 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

The substantiality and the causality of this Being are ever 
repeatedly affirmed afresh in every cognitive judgment. 
Throw this affirmation into the form of an " existential judg- 
ment " and it reads : " I experience that I am ; I live and 
know I live " — an indubitable positing of the here-and-now 
being of the subject of the state. But the same affirmation 
involves also a transcendental judgment, which reflective 
thinking is obliged to read thus : " Out of this present con- 
scious state, I was and I have been " — independent of my 
own present being as the subject, too, of those other states. 

Interwoven with the very texture of all cognitive processes, 
and with an almost equal intricacy of relations and firmness 
of manifold connection, is an implicate of the real existence of 
other minds like my own. We are not concerned just now 
with the psychological theory of the processes by which this 
interweaving takes place. The detailed descriptive history of 
these processes would not alter the epistemological and onto- 
logical significance of the facts. Other beings exist, in whose 
streams of consciousness somehow occur cognitive facts which, 
in their conditions, laws, and postulates, resemble my own : 
I am not the only one who can say, " I know ; " there are 
others, and many of them, who have their own experiences of 
a cognitive order. This, however one pleases to state it, is an 
assumption inseparable from the very experience we have 
with ourselves as cognitive ; and it is so implicated in this 
experience that, strictly speaking, no sceptical or critical 
examination of the facts of human knowledge can even be 
entered upon without it. 

It may doubtless be pointed out that Descartes, and all who 
have wished to push to its extremest limits a sceptical inquiry 
into the foundations of knowledge, have assumed as the only per- 
fectly unassailable proposition : " I know." Whether any one 
else knows, or not, and indeed whether there be any one else, to 
know or to be known, is thus held in suspense as a matter of 
legitimate doubt. Moreover, all knowledge of other minds — 



THE IMPLICATES OE KNOWLEDGE 353 

both that they are and that they know, and also what they are 
actually engaged in knowing — comes by the interpretation of 
physical signs. But since the reality of the very beings whose 
changing relations to us are given in the form of physical 
signs of conscious states may itself be doubted, there would 
seem to be two great gulfs of nescience dug between each self- 
cognizing Self and the other selves that are to be known as 
self-cognizing, too. The psychological history of the way in 
which the individual mind comes to know that other minds 
really exist, must, indeed, be accepted : We know other selves 
only as we learn to interpret into terms of our own experience, 
more or less skilfully but always with much chance for error, 
the physical signs which have become connected with the 
different kinds of that experience. No other being, besides 
myself, do 1 know so fully and confidently as I know my 
dearest most familiar human friend. Other visions may be 
shattered, and the world seem not so much actually changed ; 
for still, "I am T" . . . and "thou art thou." 

But this very psychological history introduces into episte- 
mology one of its most interesting and fruitful paradoxes, — 
not to say practical self-contradictions. For what men know 
in this doubly complex and doubtful fashion is, after all, seen 
to be most firmly, simply, and indubitably implicated in all 
their knowledge. Let not the point of the present contention 
be missed. The being of other cognizing minds, like the being 
of one's own mind, seems to lack the stability and permanency, 
in the order of the real world, which unconscious things 
appear to have; and in the mental construction of the his- 
torical conditions of all human knowledge, modern science 
is wont to posit an elaborate system of "thing-like" beings 
existing through countless ages before the first process of 
knowledge actually took place. This may all be warranted, 
or it may not be ; it is of no interest to us to dispute just 
now about the warrant for so-called anthropological and bio- 
logical evolution. But from the point of view of the critical 

23 



354 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

philosophy of knowledge — and this is our chosen point of 
view — how different does such so-called science appear ! 
For let one attempt now to call in question, to doubt, or even 
to criticise this postulate. One can only do this by assuming 
it to be quite valid and even indisputably true. Or, since one 
naturally prefers to be on the side of one's convictions and 
where one is sure of winning, let one defend the implicate of 
another's real being against that other, who assails the general 
postulate of which this particular implicate is an example. 
It is now proposed to argue the matter ; and to get arguments 
adjudged as true or false, probable or improbable ; and to see 
if the contestants cannot get together upon some common 
grounds. 

Plainly, now, all proposal, argument, or effort to reach a 
conclusion, and all the clothing given by the symbols chosen 
for these otherwise incommunicable mental states, themselves 
imply the real being of many minds. One cannot even propose 
one's sceptical idealism, or solipsistic agnosticism, as a view 
to be considered by one's self, in the deepest solitudes of one's 
most retired chamber, without being guilty of the extreme 
of absurdity. In vain does one soothe the consciousness of 
such guilt by the claim that the search is, after all, in the 
interests of a self-consistency ; for what is that which it is 
proposed to render self-consistent ? Ideas, opinions, thoughts, 
conceived of as mere psychoses or portions of the ever-flowing 
stream of consciousness, are not entities that need to be har- 
monized with each other, lest they actually quarrel and fight 
it out with one another, to the death. Shall it be claimed, 
however, that it is consistency with one's self which the inquir- 
ing defender of solipsism seeks ? But this is to be had only 
by being of the same opinion all the way through — unless, 
indeed, it is something more than mere self-consistency which 
is sought. Is the proposal, then, to test the truth of the doubt, 
or denial, of the reality of other selves than one's Self? But 
what is truth ? The question is now more puzzling than it 



THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 355 

was in the mouth of Pilate, unless it be admitted that some 
standard for the judgment of one mind exists in the structure 
of other minds. 

It is customary with those who take their solipsism most 
seriously to whip themselves around the post, and reach, as 
the conclusion of this painful self-discipline, the periodic affir- 
mation that, after all, they are sure of nothing except the cir- 
cular character of their own motion. For what, they continue 
to ask, are these other beings to me, but just my own percepts, 
mental images, and abstract conceptions, — mere moments in 
the flux of that stream of consciousness I call myself ? Such 
a conclusion, however, seems to neglect the very pertinent fact 
that, somehow, the post is still there ; and that the satisfac- 
tory completion as a fact, and even the valid description of 
the circular character of the motion has a meaning only as it 
assumes the extra-mental existence of the post. The criticism 
of percepts, mental images, and abstract conceptions, with a 
view to see how much of truth is in them, even as a bare pro- 
posal to one's self, implies some standard to determine the 
justice of the issue. This standard is not found in the mere 
fact " I think," as a purely subjective phenomenon ; but it is 
found in those implicates of '" I know ," which refer my think- 
ing to the universal terms of cognition really existent in the 
laws and operations of other minds. 

But if the bare proposal to reject this ontological implicate 
of all our cognitive processes ends in absurdity, much more 
obviously is the actual discussion of the question as to the 
validity of the implicate a supreme height of absurdity. 
Higher, indeed, up the rocky and dangerous ways of agnos- 
ticism, by attempting the path of self-contradiction, it is pos- 
sible for no mind to climb. This feat is itself a demonstration 
of the wondrously ambitious athletic quality of unchastened 
human reason. And one can scarcely avoid suspecting the 
triumphant advocate of the solipsistic hypothesis of leaving 
his vanquished opponent with the secret feeling that, in the 



356 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

eyes of their common mistress, The Truth, he has made him- 
self a being of little account. For plainly, if the dogmatic or 
sceptical denial of the reality of other minds is capable of 
being held consistently by any individual Self, it is quite in- 
capable of being made a matter of communication to other 
selves. If one knew it to be so, one could not tell another 
this truth, without assuming and affirming that it is not really 
so, is not truth. The principles of identity and of sufficient 
reason, by their combined and most strenuous efforts cannot 
hold one to a proposition more self-evident than this : Com- 
munication of knowledge, or even, and not less surely, of 
doubt and of nescience, assumes the reality of at least two 
minds, like constituted, as well as the actuality of certain rela- 
tions established, in the very act of cognition, between them. 
Try to tell me that this is not so, and you imply that, verily 
and beyond all doubt, it is so. Try to inform me that you 
doubt my view on this point and are preparing to contest it 
(with an elaborate article, we will say, in the " Journal of 
Sceptical Philosophy " ), and you only avow its incontestable 
truth many times over. For, however the implicate of other 
cognizing subjects, like the cognitive Self, gets into the struc- 
ture of every cognition, the implicate is there; and it is there 
in such fashion that not only all philosophical discussion, but 
also every thought and deed looking toward the communica- 
tion of any form of knowledge, is solemnly pledged to its 
continued existence and support. 

Nor would it be difficult to show that the existence and use 
of language, or of any other symbols for the communication of 
knowledge between men, also involves the same ontological 
truths. The proof of this truth does not depend upon doubt- 
ful inferences as to the origin and value of human language, 
or as to the nature of those means of intercommunication 
that are employed by the lower animals. In man's case, at 
any rate, we know that knowledge is, as we figuratively say, 
" conveyed " by language. This does not mean, of course, 



THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 357 

that knowledge is some sort of vendible or otherwise disposable 
goods, which can be carried over from one warehouse in the 
mind of A and deposited, little changed or injured in transit, 
within another place of safe-keeping, the mind of B. But 
the existence and actual use of any means by which, within a 
second stream of consciousness, cognitive processes may be 
set going, that resemble the cognitive process in a first 
stream of consciousness, implicates the real being of a number 
of " like-minded " minds. When it is considered that nearly 
every cognition 'for the individual, and all the growth of learn- 
ing, science, and philosophy for the race, depends upon the 
communicability of knowledge, the solid depth and wide- 
reaching extent of this implicate are apparent. For me, and 
for all men in all ages of the world's history, knowledge is a 
growth. The roots of each individual cognition penetrate 
and ramify through the entire existence of the human race. 
The individual's knowledge draws its vital sap and receives its 
form of manifestation from the common life. The substance 
and the morphology of cognition, the form and the content of 
every cognitive act, are generic and social affairs. Remove 
all this, whether it appear as the uncritical and instinctive 
or as the critical and developed metaphysics of the human 
mind, and little or nothing is left to make my knowledge dis- 
tinguishable as mine. 

These considerations bring us face to face with the fact 
that the entire solid mass of human feelings and convictions 
is found at this place to resist all attacks from scepticism and 
agnosticism. The influence of ethical and sesthetical con- 
siderations upon the very structure and suretyship of human 
knowledge affords a theme to which detailed reference will 
be made later on. If there were only this to rely upon in 
resistance to such attacks, there need be no fear for the cita- 
del of truth, or for the region it immediately defends. Men 
will never credit the statement that indubitable knowledge of 
the real existence of other minds is impossible. The guar- 



358 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

anty of this would be sufficient, if it were to be placed among 
those truths whose final evidence, according to Lotze, 1 is not 
logical at all, but rather sesthetical — not the impossibility of 
not thinking them, but the unseemly absurdity of their disproof. 
The feelings of every individual commit him too unalterably to 
a belief in the reality of his fellow men to allow of much more 
than spending an idle hour of speculation in the effort to see 
if he cannot persuade himself that they are but the projec- 
tion, upon a subjectively constituted background, of his own 
mental images and experiences of an affective type. 

In the fact of cognition, however, and in the defensible 
theory of knowledge, the implicate of the reality of other 
minds belongs to the very structure of experience. Every 
factor of my cognitive life — thought, feeling, and will ; and 
however expressed, whether as inference, blind belief, rational 
postulate, instinctive or determinative action — pledges me to 
the reality of other beings, that are known as selves like me, 
but are not-me. The reality of such beings is an ontological 
implicate that admits neither of denial nor of disproof. It 
does not even admit of question or statement in the form 
of doubt, without revealing at once the intrinsic absurdity of 
contradicting it. 

Once more, the reality of a system of things which have 
some sort of separate being, and yet are connected together in 
some kind of unitary way, and to which I find myself related 
in varying terms of reciprocal activity and passivity, is an onto- 
logical implicate of all human cognition. Undoubtedly, this 
very complicated statement of the truth of experience will 
be contested by not a few reflective thinkers upon the problem 
of knowledge. But, here again, even in contesting, they will 
admit it ; for thus much of known reality is inextricably bound 
up in, and guaranteed by, the fundamental experiences of 
every mind in cognition, and the most ardent advocate of 
the extremest form of solipsism is unable to free himself from 

1 Logik ; the last part of the chapter, Die apriorischen Wahrheiten. 



THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 359 

the charge of absurdity in proposing to argue this implicate. 
Further critical examination of this epistemological truth 
reveals the fact that in defending it, we are only affirming 
the validity, for all known Reality, of the most fundamental 
of the so-called " categories." And this is the inevitable 
conclusion from all the analysis of knowledge which has 
been accomplished up to this point in the discussion of the 
epistemological problem. The simple truth is, then, that we 
must either abandon all claims to knowledge, in any meaning 
of the word which can get recognition by the facts of human 
experience, or else we must admit the claims of some such 
implicate as this. 

The detailed discussion of the separate categories discover- 
able in this ontological implicate, the complicated affirmation 
as to the Being of X which is involved in the totality of hu- 
man cognitive life, is a treatise on metaphysics, — if only the 
discussion be combined with a criticism of those bonds which 
are held by all men to connect the differentiated things to- 
gether into some sort of a Unitary Reality. Such discussion 
is, of course, reserved for another essay. But a few words 
upon several points seem necessary to bring the epistemologi- 
cal discussion to a satisfactory conclusion at this point. 

All human knowledge both assumes and guarantees the 
validity of the application of the category of Relation to the 
really existent world. This category has, not inaptly, been 
called " the mother of all the others ; " 1 only it must be remem- 
bered that categories are not the breed of one another, after the 
pattern of biological entities. This concept is derived from the 
self-observed form of the intellect as operative in every cogni- 
tive process of whatever character. Relation applies to phe- 
nomena and other phenomena, to phenomena and the realities 
of which they are phenomena and to which they are phenomena, 
to thoughts and thoughts, to thoughts and things, and to things 
and things. No other category is so universal ; and, there- 

1 A phrase of Giinther's. See Klein, "Die Genesis der Kategorien," p. 32. 



360 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

fore, no other is so impossible of definition or even of descrip- 
tion. It cannot be made clearer than it is in itself. It gets 
its most immediate and indubitable application to reality, in 
the actual concrete cognitions of self-consciousness. And if 
we say of things that they have such qualities, and stand in 
such relations, as matters of our cognition, we can attach no 
meaning to the words " have " and " stand," unless we trans- 
late them into our experience, as self-conscious selves, with our 
objects of cognition. What is it really to be related ? What 
relates ; and what is related ? A critical metaphysics shows 
that no answers can be given to such questions, unless things 
are conceived of as self-active beings, with their various modes 
of behavior interdependent and yet united under a frame- 
work, so to speak, of immanent ideas. Unrelated Being is, 
indeed, unknowable ; but, then, this is not the fault of human 
knowledge, which forces it to become hopelessly agnostic 
because it cannot rise above its own inherent faults. It is 
rather due to the fundamental truth that knowledge is a 
grasp upon reality, and that unrelated being is unreal ; it is 
no Being, but only the figment of an ill-disciplined imagi- 
nation which, having got loose from the facts of experi- 
ence, is trying to " cut capers " in air too thin for its own 
healthy existence. 

The valid application of the connected categories of Change 
and Causality to the really existent world is also implicate in 
all human cognition. The real Being of Xis given to human 
knowledge not as an Eleatic One and Unchangeable but as a 
Principle of Becoming. It has, indeed, its own Unity, or 
Oneness, the nature of which the human mind may eagerly 
strive to apprehend. It has, too, its regulative principles, 
from which it never swerves, and which stand, themselves 
unchangeable, amid all the changes of finite minds and finite 
things. But to deny or to doubt the reality of change — of a 
system of interdependent changes constituting a connected 
and unitary process of Becoming — is to deny or to doubt 



THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 361 

the possibility of knowledge. And why some huge mon- 
strosity of an ontological sort, a great all-embracing death's- 
head of a Dlng-an-Sioh, should have superior attractions for 
metaphysical philosophy, it is difficult to determine. At any 
rate, change is here, in the real world as men know it ; and 
it is so bound up with the life of human knowledge that its 
removal sacrifices the life itself. 

Without further specifications, - — lest the task of epistemol- 
ogy be too much burdened and the task of ontology be made 
correspondingly too light, — we close this chapter with two re- 
marks. And, first, the philosophy of knowledge, when its criti- 
cal analysis is extended and made more penetrating, comes to 
regard the categories as, above all, those forms or determina- 
tions in which the spirit, in its process of becoming self- 
conscious, finds itself by its own constitution compelled to 
apprehend itself and its own life. All the so-called categories 
are but the forms which reflective recognition gives to the 
facts of self-consciousness. This they all are, epistemologi- 
cally considered. Ontologically considered, they become forms 
of being, as " implicate " in self-consciousness. But that 
" Self" which, as a concept, is the spirit's own construction, 
embraces other being, and other life, in its own cognitive and 
self-conscious development. Therefore, a true and full knowl- 
edge of Self is the prime condition of a valid and ever larger 
knowledge of all Being. 

Strangely enough, that great reflective genius, Kant, failed 
here, and introduced all the modern fashion, so far as it has 
followed him, of treating the categories as dead or merely 
formal modes of the functioning of mind in judgment. When, 
however, these same categories are seen to be the indubita- 
bly trustworthy modes of the soul's life of cognition, in its 
immediate and yet growing apprehension of its own Being 
and its justifiable and necessary but analogical apprehension 
of the Being of the World without, the face of the critic 
of cognitive faculty begins to wear another look. The real 



362 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

trouble of modern epistemological theory has been with the 
Kantian formalism, and not with the facts of experience. 
The facts, indeed, lead to moderation in theory and to 
caution in life. For the island of the human mind has 
not, as yet, been thoroughly explored by any critic ; and there 
are, indeed, unknown and, perhaps, unknowable stretches to 
its limiting ocean. But if I will begin by knowing myself, 
not in a merely formal and logical way, but as a concrete, 
active, and free rationality, having valid commerce with the 
world of the really existent — however restricted that com- 
merce may be — I need not forever approach with despair 
either the woods and jungles of the island or the mists and 
fogs of the surrounding seas. For I am thus empowered to 
make certain affirmations and certain denials with regard to 
the Nature of all Reality. Positively, its nature is, so far 
as known, like that of my own Self. This conclusion does 
not take the form of a command to declare the complete 
and unalterable impossibility of a valid cognition of Reality ; 
the rather is it the discovery of Reality, as it actually is, 
implicate in my cognitive consciousness. Cautiously inter- 
preted and correctly understood, so much is true of that 
most complicated and obviously anthropomorphic of all the 
so-called categories, the concept of causality. When it is 
seen how this category, in all its concrete richness of content, 
as developed by the mature self-consciousness, is but the as- 
sertion of the Self's valid experience in its cognitive commerce 
with things, the necessity becomes apparent of regarding the 
principle as something more than merely formal, as rather a 
true mental representation of the Being of the extra-men- 
tally Existent. Under this category is obtained a valid cog- 
nition of real things, actual transactions, true relations, etc. 
Just as all our formal thinking reposes, for its formal cor- 
rectness, upon certain cognitive judgments of perception and 
of self-consciousness, so does our varied knowledge of the 
beings, transactions, and relations of the real World, ground 



THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 363 

itself firmly in the immediate knowledge of ourselves as 
really existent in actual relations of reciprocal dependence 
to the objects of perception through the senses. 1 

But certain current conceptions as to the nature of Reality, 
instead of being confirmed, are quite distinctly disproved by 
this view of the way the categories get application to objec- 
tive experience. We cannot so apply the principles of iden- 
tity and non-contradiction, or of sufficient reason, as to affirm 
that the entire Nature of the World's real Being is given to 
us in conceptions answering to terms such as these : " The 
reign of universal Law ; " " The unalterable Cosmic Order ; " 
• The dominion of universal Reason," — meaning by " Law," 
" Order," and " Reason," what is customarily concealed in the 
words. True, the principle of identity and non-contradiction 
cannot be gainsaid ; and under it there is given to cognition 
a really existent World that must be known as some sort of 
a self-consistent whole. But when it is asserted, in the words 
of another, 2 " The contradictory is a category which can only 
belong to the combination of our thoughts, but not to any 
actuality," we must beware of the temptation illegitimately 
to reduce all things to the terms of a perfect logical and formal 
consistency. Actuality, as known, is full of the most baffling 
contradictions, when it is approached with the determination to 
throw a halter over its neck and tame it completely with reins 
and whip of the " pure understanding." But, then, the Self, 
in terms of whose own life we, analogically and by application 
of the categories, gain a knowledge of that other Life, is not 
mere law, or order, or pure understanding. 

1 Again attention is called to the effects upon the philosophy of knowledge 
which follow from that most mischievous and absurd of all the current psycho- 
logical heresies — the theory of psycho-physical parallelism. It should by this 
time he apparent that this theory is not only scientifically quite indefensible 
and void of support in facts, but inextricably connected with the most complete 
and hopeless agnosticism of an epistemological sort. Moreover, it totally destroys 
the foundations upon which is based the conception of the whole of experience — 
the World — as founded in a real Unity. 

2 Diihring, Cursus der Fhilosophie, p. 30. 



364 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

The Being of the World need not be any less real, or less 
validly and indubitably known, if it is conceived of, in part, in 
terms of the passionate feeling-full, ethical, and aesthetical 
nature of man. Such anthropopathie cognition need be not 
one whit less true to facts than the cold-blooded anthropo- 
morphism of physical science. Especially does the scientific 
observer of nature require caution as to the use he makes of 
the category of causality. In the current scientific use of 
this term it has, indeed, absolutely no warrant for a complete 
and inexorable application to the Being of the really Existent. 
As Riehl has correctly said, 1 this conception and its accom- 
panying conviction " is obviously wanting even to-day in the 
majority of men, and appears to have been wanting to the 
philosophy of antiquity down to the time of Democritus. ,, And 
when the conception of causality is itself confined to the law 
of the conservation and correlation of energy, and the wiiole 
World is reduced to a problem in mathematical mechanics, 
the state of our knowledge, and the hope of it, become meagre 
and pitiful indeed. It is, then, in point to call attention to 
the fact that, really, there is no such thing as mathematical 
Space or mathematical Time ; no such reality as a sum-total of 
Physical Energy ; and that we have no such assured knowledge 
of its entities or actual relations as is needed to validate the 
preposterous claim that the world of Things and of Minds cor- 
responds to the conception of a machine. 

But, second, we may venture, even in the name of the 
philosophy of knowledge and by a permissible extension of 
the speculative privileges which belong to its serious student, 
to suggest another and much more admirable picture of the 
real Being of the World. This X, which is the Being of the 
World (the "World-Ground" or the " Absolute," as metaphys- 
ics is accustomed to call It when developing the doctrine of it 
speculatively), must be further conceived of so as to be a true 
explanatory principle for all our varied cognitions of Things. 

1 Der Philosophische Kriticismus, II., ii., p. 80. 



THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 365 

It must exhibit the meaning of the world, as known to man, 
by throwing its radiance upon all particular beings, particular 
events, and special relations. That X cannot be made to do 
this work as a task performed in deduction under strictly 
logical formulas, follows from the way in which the principle 
itself is found implicate in all concrete, individual cognitions. 
It may do a similar work, however, as a kind of epistemologi- 
cal postulate so constructed by reflective thinking as to be 
itself guaranteed by these concrete cognitions, while, at the 
same time, shedding the light of its radiance upon them all. 
But it can perform this task only if it is conceived of both as 
a principle of manifoldness or differentiation, and as a prin- 
ciple of unity. It must be a principle of explanation for the 
actual manifoldness of the one real World. Now the reality 
of a system of inter-connected changes has been found impli- 
cate in all the life of the cognitive subject. It would seem, 
then, that the fundamental principle must serve as the Ground, 
the Law, and the Final Purpose of this system of changes. 
Moreover, this system is known as a sort of unity that has 
centres of self-activity which are not complete in themselves, 
but which are bound together into a formal whole, because 
they are existent in Space and Time, whose characteristics 
they all share, and are also bound together in more vital ways 
by the actual operation of what we call a causal connection. 
It would seem, then, that some kind of an Absolute Being 
must be postulated for that final summary which shall ex- 
press the full force and meaning of the ontological implicates 
of all human knowledge. For, as has been said, Xmust serve 
as a principle both of differentiation and of unity. 

This generalization from the ontological implicates of knowl- 
edge, under one term, must be further criticised and expli- 
cated by metaphysics. For here, if anywhere, is discovered 
the sacred bridge over which ontological philosophy may pass 
to conquer as much of the region on the hither side as its 
forces can, by combined and prolonged effort. Just now it 



366 THE IMPLICATES OF KNOWLEDGE 

does not appear as though a long campaign were necessary to 
establish, at least, several impregnable strongholds in this 
region. For our cognition of what is real has been shown 
to be all, either of the Self, or of the not-self, — the latter 
known assuredly, but only after the analogy of the Self. 
Human experience indicates, then, that the one postulate of 
its system of cognitions must be stated somewhat as follows : 
The Being of the World is a Unity, self -differentiating in accord- 
ance with immanent Ideas. Translated into terms which are 
nearer to daily experience and have a more positive content : 
The system of interrelated beings, which are objects of man's 
knowledge, is known only as it is a manifestation of Intellect, 
Feeling, and Will. The Being of the really Existent must 
include all these qualifications, for they are all implicates of 
that life of cognition which the Self knows itself to have. 



CHAPTER XIII 

SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 

THE attitudes of men's minds toward the different forms 
or sets of cognitive judgments, as well as toward the 
nature and validity of all cognition, admit of a considerable 
and most instructive variability. Practical considerations do, 
indeed, always draw a tight rein over the neck of " pure un- 
derstanding " and of "rational faith," in their efforts to 
afford to a merely speculative or emotional regard for truth 
and reality its fullest satisfaction. One may adopt and 
adhere as consistently as possible to the most extreme form 
of a sceptical idealism, but one must behave as though other 
minds and other things were existent in a reality of which 
their appearances to us are in some sort a correct and trust- 
worthy copy. He who attempts to act, with a strict logical 
consistency, according to the hypothesis that the world of 
objects known to him is merely his " idea," runs no small risk 
of pursuing his dream-like life in the confines of the mad- 
house. It is, indeed, confessedly difficult — perhaps impos- 
sible — to lay down rules for the infallible distinction of a 
great variety of illusions and hallucinations from the plainest 
facts of normal perceptive experience. Every observer knows, 
moreover, that the most completely logical systems of a scien- 
tific or philosophical order are most apt to encounter invincible 
opposition from the concrete facts of nature and of human 
life. But the alternative, if one wishes to " get along " at all 
satisfactorily in the world, is certainly not to be found either 
in the confusion of all limits between the normal and the 



368 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 

hallucinatory in sense-perception, or in the refusal to take 
pains to think with theoretic clearness, or in the rejection of 
all guidance from reason in so-called practical affairs. Espe- 
cially true and noteworthy is the fact that in matters of con- 
duct, scepticism and agnosticism meet with exceedingly firm 
and comprehensive resistance. He who even expresses a com- 
plete nescience, or an unlimited doubt, as to the surrounding 
body of judgments about the right forms of behavior, although 
his mental attitudes may not lead him to the practice of his 
scepticism or agnosticism, is isolated from the community of 
his fellows by their distrust and scorn ; and he, too, may end 
his days in some cell of a prison or mad-house. 

So-called practical considerations influence cogently the 
tendencies toward a sceptical or agnostic attitude of mind 
in respect of certain objects also, which are more fitly re- 
garded as belonging to the realm of faith than of " pure un- 
derstanding." No one can doubt that, in fact, it is the needs, 
desires, hopes, and fears of men which so largely stir and 
guide them in the mental relations they assume toward God, 
freedom, and the immortal life. As Tolstoi makes one of his 
characters affirm, it is in life rather than by processes of rea- 
soning that men find God. Most men — and, perhaps, in the 
last analysis, the most argumentative of them — refuse to be 
satisfied with the statistics and mechanical formulas of the 
determinist ; because these do not accord with their ideas of 
value rather than purely because they do not harmonize with 
the details of the world of fact. And " ideas of value " are 
allurements and helps to conduct first; only afterward, and 
then somewhat vaguely, do they yield themselves to scientific 
and philosophical treatment. The forlorn and lonely soul 
who has just seen lowered away — " earth to earth, ashes to 
ashes," and dust to dust " — what was but yesterday so really 
present and so tenderly dear to him, finds little enough of 
logical stuff for a demonstration of immortality in the earth 
beneath, the sky above, or the sad mortals around him ; but 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 369 

perhaps he cannot bear, and will not bear, to have it so as 
that this is the end of all. 

Yet scepticism and agnosticism remain legitimate and valu- 
able (even indispensable) attitudes of the human mind toward 
all the objects both of knowledge and of so-called faith. Their 
legitimacy is proved by the obvious experience of the individual 
and of the race. This experience plainly shows that the phe- 
nomena represented by the words are not incidental, abnormal, 
or superficial in the mental and moral development of man. 
On the contrary, they belong to the very deepest things in the 
life and growth of reason. To doubt and inquire, to refuse 
to affirm, and to deny, whether applied in the interests of con- 
duct, of science, or of speculative thinking, are as essential to 
the processes of cognition as are faith and affirmation of the 
most positive and undisturbed kind. Moreover, the attaining 
and holding of our most assured products of cognition are de- 
pendent upon those mental attitudes which fall under the terms 
" scepticism " and " agnosticism " ; and the history of science 
and philosophy — yes, also, and not less abundantly, the his- 
tory of ethical and religious opinions and faiths — shows the 
indispensable value of these dubitating and negative states of 
mind. It is not simply that in this way only can error be con- 
stantly discerned and separated from truth ; but it is also and 
chiefly that the very life of the mind, in its most eager and 
successful pursuit of truth, necessarily follows the same path. 
The dignity and worth of the Self, as known to itself, and so 
the dignity and worth of all that really existent World which 
can be known only analogically, as implicate in and correlated 
with the knowledge of Self, depend upon the ability to pause, 
to withhold judgment, to check the tendency to a rash dogma- 
tism, and even to remain in intelligent and avowed nescience 
where knowledge is denied. Although there remains the inde- 
structible confidence of the soul that the world of fact and the 
world of values is somehow one and harmonious, and although 
we can never divorce knowledge from its own teleological con- 

24 



370 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 

struction and import, it is better for the present to doubt and 
suffer, or to acknowledge a discontented and hopeless igno- 
rance, than to believe a lie or to prostitute reason for the 
satisfaction of a lust after pleasure, or a longing to escape 
from pain. 

At the same time, experience is one ; and the effort of 
thought is to explain in its totality what must be taken in its 
totality. A human soul, divided against itself, cannot stand. 
And woe to the generation which, while affirming a scientific 
or philosophic knowledge of one thing, keeps up its courage 
by exhorting faith and conduct " as though " another and 
opposite thing were true. For that generation is doomed 
either to reject the exhortation or to become a generation of 
weaklings and hypocrites. Neither can we believe that natu- 
ral science and philosophy on the one hand, and conduct and 
faith on the other hand, are so different in either their 
sources, their nature, or their ultimate principles, insights, 
and imports, that they admit of thus being divorced. What 
retribution is visited upon those who continue to preach as 
right in conduct what they make no attempt to practise, and 
who hold fast to dogmatic tenets and credos in religion which 
they are sure science has transcended or removed, there is 
history enough to show. But here is one of those rules which 
are poor indeed if they do not work both ways. And dog- 
matic tenets and credos in science or philosophy do not, in 
the long run, and when judged by the ultimate standards, 
fare much better, if they claim for themselves an immunity 
from scepticism and agnosticism which they will not grant to 
so-called ethical and religious faiths. Human nature will not 
forever bear to be arrayed against itself. If Kant failed of 
success in removing knowledge in order to make room for 
faith, the original effort of Mr. Spencer, in his " First Prin- 
ciples," to reconcile science and religion upon a basis of 
complete agnosticism, has been a ten-fold more conspicuous 
failure. Nor will the wise student of the history of man's 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 371 

development place much confidence in any of the current pro- 
posals for a " reconciliation " which is to be effected by as- 
signing one set of faculties, as it were, to science, and another 
to conduct and religion ; or by proposing that one attitude of 
mind shall be turned toward the world of things as natural 
science sees it, for six days each week, and another contra- 
dictory attitude toward God and immortality, for, at most, an 
hour and a half of the remaining day. For the simple truth 
is that, sooner or later, men will walk all the way through 
their experience ; they will try to survey it on all sides ; and 
as they walk and look, they will be human natures still, — 
thinking, feeling, planning, full of interest, not only in the 
world visible and present, but in the world unseen, and in 
the world that is ever about to come. 

It is not our intention, however, in this chapter to attempt 
a historical or a critical estimate of the sources, nature, and 
value of the sceptical and agnostic attitudes of mind. Nor 
does the present purpose require that any particular form 
of truth should be defended against assaults made by those 
who persistently assume either of these attitudes. The latter 
and more restricted of these two inquiries would, if thoroughly 
pursued, lead to a detailed examination of the nature and 
limits of the evidence and proof which may be demanded by 
each of those special groups of cognitions and opinions toward 
which it is possible for the individual mind to be either dog- 
matic, sceptical, or agnostic. And here Aristotle's view seems 
as wise and fitly applicable as ever. We must not expect the 
same kind of proof or evidence for all kinds of subjects. For 
although our experience is one and cannot be discerned except 
as illumined from the full-orbed and central light of the self- 
conscious Self, yet the different objects of that one experience 
get themselves accepted as real, or are denied place in the 
world of reality, in widely differing ways and upon terms 
that are by no means precisely the same. 

For example, those concepts of all physics with which the 



372 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 

most mathematical branches of astronomy deal are as truly 
mental products, that cannot be understood without a correct 
doctrine of the feeling-full and voluntary nature of the cogni- 
tive judgment, and of the presence and influence of ethical 
and aesthetical " momenta," as are the concepts of ethics and 
theology. At the same time, no one would think of affirming 
that truths about the movements and physical constitution 
of the solar system are discovered and expounded or de- 
fended with precisely the same methodology and emotional and 
volitional accompaniments as are truths of duty and religion. 
From such irremovable differences it follows that the province 
and values of the sceptical and agnostic attitudes of mind are 
very different in physical science and in matters of conduct, 
faith, and worship. Indeed, it is largely upon this difference 
that we have elsewhere * divided the whole subject-matter of 
science and philosophy into that which concerns what is, the 
Heal, and that which concerns what ought to be, or the Ideal. 
The critical estimate of the scope and validity of sceptical 
inquiry and of an agnostic outcome, as concerned with these 
two great kinds of material for reflective thinking, and also 
as concerned with all the particular subdivisions of these 
kinds, is a theme for a more special inquiry than that of the 
present treatise. 2 On the other hand, a history of scepticism 
and agnosticism is not a part of epistemology, however valu- 
able a propaedeutic it may be. 

1 Introduction to Philosophy, chapter viii. : H The Divisions of Philosophy." 

2 There are few more alluring and promising fields for a critical use of the 
reflective powers in which philosophy arises than those afforded just now by the 
physical and natural sciences. I have several times already expressed my con- 
viction that these sciences are more than ever before full to the brim, and ready 
to burst, with ontological conceptions and assumptions of most portentous dimen- 
sions and uncertain validity. Surely scepticism and agnosticism, now nearly 
sated with feeding upon the ancient body of alleged truths in ethics and religion, 
will soon turn their devouring maw upon the structure generated and nourished 
by the modern scientific spirit as dominant in chemico physical and biological re- 
searches. And if the strength of their appetite and the vigor of their digestion 
remain unimpaired, must we not fear that even the bones of this structure will 
disappear from our view ? Consider, for example, what would be left of the liy- 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 373 

Some critical estimate of the sources, nature, and value of 
the sceptical and agnostic attitudes of mind toward cognition, 
as such, has already been implied in all the previous discus- 
sions. For it is possible to doubt and to deny, or to profess 
ignorance, respecting the ^raws-subjective validity of cognitive 
faculty itself. This is, indeed, a part of the supreme activity 
of the self-reflective and critical human mind. It is not 
simply as to the truthfulness of particular judgments and the 
verisimilitude of particular concepts, but as to the possibility of 
attaining truth at all — as to the trustworthiness of all mental 
representation of the being and transactions of the really 
Existent — that the extremity of scepticism and agnosticism 
raises our doubts. In raising and pursuing these doubts the 
mind makes its own cognitive processes its object of cognition. 
It is this very thing which critical epistemology proposes to do ; 
and for this reason it has been called " science of science, ,, 
" theory of knowledge," or Wissenschaftslehre. It is the em- 
ployment of a certain amount of scepticism which is com- 
mended by the declaration that epistemology is the " most 
presuppositionless " of all branches of philosophy, the one 
exercise of the human mind in reflective thinking which in- 
sists upon starting with a rt metaphysical minimum" That 
is to say, nothing is to be assumed as true respecting the pro- 
cess or the object involved in the primitive act of cognition, 
except what, as we immediately discover, is inseparable mat- 
ter-of-fact belonging also to the very proposal to undertake 
such sceptical examination. It is this very plan which we 
have been following ; and the result has been to show that all 
scepticism and all agnosticism are, even in their most active 
and extreme forms, self-limiting and self-destructive. 

pothesis of biological evolution, if a thorough critical and sceptical treatment 
were given to its metaphysical basis, its postulated ontological conceptions and 
assumptions. Surely, the way in which many students of these sciences vacillate 
between the most comprehensive professions of knowledge as to what the world 
is, and how it came to be, and the most abject confessions of ignorance, is little 
better than scandalous. 



374 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 

The sceptical and agnostic attitudes of mind must not be 
conceived of as once for all fixed and unchanging. If to 
these attitudes we add the dogmatic and critical, we have the 
picture of a ceaseless shifting of what may perhaps be called 
the " temper " of affective consciousness toward the proposi- 
tions in which men express their cognitive judgments. The 
dogmatic attitude of mind accepts these propositions without 
previous sceptical or critical inquiry into the grounds on 
which they rest ; it, nevertheless, holds them with the warmth 
and tenacity of conviction that are made thoroughly rational 
only as a result of such inquiry. The sceptical attitude be- 
gins by doubting the propositions, and by proposing to 
examine the grounds of their alleged truthfulness, while 
maintaining meantime a temper of non-assent toward them. 
The attitude which avows nescience, or no-knowledge (a- 
knowledge), toward these propositions may be called agnostic. 
By the critical attitude little else can be meant than that fine 
and intelligent balance in the action of cognitive faculty 
which is sceptical before the grounds of judgment are ex- 
amined, and agnostic when the alleged grounds turn out 
mistaken or insufficient ; but which is equally ready positively 
to affirm, or positively to deny, when the process of inquiry 
has justified the required cognitive judgment. 

Now it is obvious that there is no kind of knowledge, and 
no particular alleged cognitive judgment, toward which it is 
inconceivable that all of these attitudes of mind should be 
assumed at different times. As a matter of fact, different 
minds do manage to differentiate themselves on occasions 
where the feelings and practical interests as well as the 
amount of evidence " in sight " seem to warrant such differ- 
entiation, in accordance with all these types, although respect- 
ing the same propositions. It is scarcely possible to throw 
any cognitive judgment into the form of such a proposition 
that all men will either accept or deny it ; or, perhaps, will 
consent to regard its truthfulness as doubtful. And the very 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 375 

growth of knowledge, in the individual and in the race, de- 
pends upon the possibility of every individual, and of each 
generation, changing somewhat freely its " temper " of con- 
sciousness toward propositions current in the past. We are 
especially fond of boasting that the present age is predomi- 
natingly critical. It is, indeed, sufficiently sceptical and 
agnostic toward many ancient and important truths (or al- 
leged truths), — especially those of ethics and religion. But 
it is also commendably anxious to weigh fairly the evidence ; 
and if this evidence seems sufficient, it is willing not to per- 
sist unreasonably in the merely sceptical or agnostic position. 
How often do we hear the Zeitgeist sincerely and pathetically 
lamenting its inability, on rational grounds, to affirm knowl- 
edge, or to act in the full faith of truths that, nevertheless, 
appear to it to have a high ideal value ! Or else it attempts 
that divorce of faith and knowledge which we have already 
declared to be as mischievous as it is, in the final issue, im- 
possible. Thus it comes about that, as never before, the 
multitude of men are sensitive to all the rapid changes of 
objective temperature ; they either feel themselves cooling off 
toward some truth to which they have formerly been most 
warmly attached, or else unable to resist the heating effect of 
the atmosphere of opinion which, for the moment, has made 
certain other propositions glow and shine like the sun in the 
centre of the solar system. What use, for example, nowa- 
days in expressing one's thoughts upon any matter without 
frequent phrases, largely meaningless, taken from the theory 
of biological evolution ? How many " scientific " minds can 
be found who are daunted as quickly by the mysterious and 
contradictory attributes of the " ether," as by the difficulties 
attaching themselves to the current theological conceptions 
of a Supreme Being? 

What is true of the attitudes of scepticism, agnosticism, and 
criticism, with reference to particular forms of the cognitive 
judgment, is true of the same attitudes toward knowledge in 



376 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 

general. Yet the course of our discussion has most clearly 
shown how, when assumed toward the activity and the prod- 
uct of the mind in all knowledge, these attitudes are self- 
limiting and self-destructive. That is to say, it has been 
demonstrated by a critical examination that complete and con- 
sistent scepticism and agnosticism, with reference to man's 
power mentally to represent the being and the transactions 
of the really Existent, are impossible. The whole inquiry, 
then, becomes one respecting the limits of scepticism and 
agnosticism, — with respect to the propositions laid down in 
the course of a critical epistemology. 

It is evident that in dealing with epistemological prob- 
lems, scepticism quickly reaches a position in which it is 
strictly limited, on the one hand, by a perfectly clear and 
indubitable cognition, and on the other hand, by a quite 
irremovable and impenetrable agnosticism. Agnosticism, in 
its turn, now appears as an attitude of mind toward episte- 
mological inquiries which can arrive at no conclusion; and 
which cannot even posit its own existence without assuming 
both the validity of knowledge and the rights of an untram- 
melled but by no means nescient function of scepticism. 
Moreover, all this is just as fundamentally true and impor- 
tant where the sceptical and agnostic attitudes are the posi- 
tions of a mind that proposes to transcend, by following the 
critical path mapped out by Kant, the dogmatism commonly 
concealed under both these attitudes. For the more candid 
and thorough our use of criticism becomes, the more clearly 
does it appear that epistemological scepticism and agnosti- 
cism have their fixed and impassable barriers in the very 
nature of cognitive faculty. 

To illustrate the statements just made, let us suppose that 
the so-called " immediate " cognition of things by the senses 
is being made the special subject of a thoroughly sceptical 
and agnostic treatment. We have " on hand," so to speak, 
the common-sense view of the nature, significance, and valid- 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 377 

ity of the perceptive act. This view assumes that things 
really (that is, extra-meiitsilly) are what they seem to all 
men to be. Or in other words, things perceived and apper- 
ceived, things as known by me when I exercise my normal 
powers of cognition through the senses, under fairly favorable 
circumstances (as respects degree of stimulus, concentration 
of attention, freedom from temporary impairments or perma- 
nent unfitness of the organs, etc.), are given to me within con- 
sciousness w about as " they really exist and actually behave 
in the world that is out of my consciousness. [We have 
designedly been thus indefinite, because the most dogmatic 
advocate of common-sense realism will admit a certain in- 
definite range of inaccuracies and non-correspondences be- 
tween things and their mental copies.] Now scepticism 
makes short work of this easy-going common-sense view as 
it is held only by the unreflective mind, and yet as it consti- 
tutes the practical hypothesis of the most sceptical of episte- 
mological inquirers. In the name of both psychology and 
physics, it first attacks the so-called " secondary qualities " of 
things. Their color, feel, sound, smell, and taste, are all 
resolved into subjective affections which, as described by 
psychology, bear not the faintest resemblance to those causes 
of the affections that, as physics demonstrates to its satis- 
faction, reside in the massive or molecular structure and 
functions of the physical world. If, at about this point, 
psycho-physics and physiological psychology take " common- 
sense " in hand, and subject its clearest deliverances to their 
critical testing, nothing is left of the common-sense view of 
perception. For science shows that perception is not a sort 
of fairly accurate " copying-off," brought about in conscious- 
ness through the action of ready-made external things. And 
when a more critical psychology, helped out by the meta- 
physics of physics and (though often without much clear 
recognition of what it is about) grown sensitive to considera- 
tions derived from a sceptical epistemology, has discussed the 



378 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 

origin and nature of the " primary qualities " of things, not 
a vestige of standing-room seems left for the most obvious 
declarations of the " plain man's " consciousness as to his 
sensuous knowledge of things. 

It is to be noticed, however, that psychology, psycho- 
physics, and physics, while they have united in a sceptical 
attack upon the ordinary view of the cognition of things, as a 
valid representation of trans-subjective qualities and relations, 
have all the while been indulging themselves in a dogmatism 
of their own. It is altogether likely that they have done this 
with some unseemly vociferation against the presence in these 
" sciences " of the least taint of metaphysics or of episte- 
mology. Yet no writers have, on the whole, been more 
crudely dogmatic in respect of their noetic and ontological 
conceptions and assumptions than have those whose avowed 
aim has been to treat psychical phenomena from the stand- 
point of a science that is sceptical as to all the ultimate prob- 
lems. Let, now, the sceptical inquiry be pushed forward into 
that mass of alleged cognitions as to the constitution and be- 
havior of things which modern science has substituted for 
those sense-percepts that men, in general, find given to their 
mind. The imagination of the most myth-making of the 
ancients, or the untrained fancy of the most superstitious 
of the savages, has never resulted in so marvellous and sur- 
prising a picture of the " unsenscd " reality of things. It is 
confessedly impossible to recognize in these things, as they 
are, the prototypes of things as ive know them in our work-a- 
day life. Yet this world of scientific discovery is the pro- 
posed substitute for the world of common-sense. That very 
sceptical process, which has resulted in the destruction of our 
confidence in so-called common-sense, has been accompanied 
by a more or less dogmatic construction of an eatfra-mentally 
real world, which is now relied upon to explain the world of 
common-sense, and at the same time to serve as a barrier 
against the march of scepticism forward to a completely agnos- 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 379 

tic outcome. From a world which all men immediately know 
and believe in, we have been led by scepticism to a world 
about which we * indirectly know and believe in anything 
whatever only as we trust the intellectual processes of others, 
under the principles of identity and of sufficient reason. What 
now if scepticism, recognizing that it has been cheated of its 
full rights, attacks the validity of these principles, and so 
threatens the reality of the world which imagination and 
thought have constructed by following them ? 

And now the destructive work of sceptical inquiry begins 
over again. But its field of inquiry is changed to that 
realm of lofty imaginings, abstract conceptions, and gen- 
eralized formulas, for which science holds itself responsible. 
Its structures, although built by a community of stout hearts 
and skilful hands and noble purposes, are even frailer on 
some sides than are those products of sense which have 
been, often so inadvertently, called " illusory " and " unreal." 
Once more, however, as has already been shown, a limit 
is reached beyond which scepticism cannot go. There is 
in my perceptive consciousness that which, somehow and at 
some first time, I have come, indubitably and with the clear- 
est cognition, to recognize as not merely the state of my 
consciousness but as known certainly and immediately to be 
" not-me" Here scepticism meets the insuperable barrier of 
a positive Somewhat that is in consciousness but is not the 
mere product of consciousness, — that is subjective, because 
it is an object of my cognition, and yet is trans-subjective, 
because it is the cognized " opposite " of the Self. That such 
a limit is actually set to the sceptical treatment of the knowl- 
edge of things by the senses, and that it is applicable to all 
both normal and abnormal processes of perception, has been 
shown to be true, over and over again. 

But it is equally plain that the sceptical inquiry must be 
accompanied, from its point of starting to its final issue, by 
confessions of ignorance or nescience that cannot, all of 



380 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 



them, be considered as temporary or unimportant in respect 
of the nature and growth of knowledge. For if I stop at any 
stage of the sceptical inquiry to ask after* explanations for 
all that I seem to know, or for all that I know I doubt, the 
only answer which can be truthfully given must often be, 
" I do not know." And at the end of the most candid and 
thorough criticism of cognitive faculty, it must be replied to 
a vast number of particular questions, though falling under a 
few general classes, that such things are not given or per- 
mitted to man to know. From this it follows, as a matter 
both of theoretical economy and of practical wisdom, that the 
mind should recognize the unreason and the absurdity of even 
attempting to answer certain inquiries. Both science and 
scepticism — however paradoxical the statement may seem — 
appear to be constantly limited by nescience. The very 
nature and the laws of the development of knowledge itself 
require us to learn to say, " I do not know." And where 
the experience of the race is sufficiently clear and cumulative, 
the spirit of philosophical criticism is not violated by saying : 
"I do not think that any man will ever know, or that the 
human mind is capable of knowing." 

For example, something of this sort seems necessarily to 
be true in respect of all human knowledge of things, whether 
immediate through the senses, or indirect and inferential as 
a body of accumulated information about things in terms of 
physical science. This is true of the dicta of the most ordi- 
nary common-sense. " Sugar is sweet ; " but " lemons are 
sour : " " The grass is green ; " but " the heavens are blue, 
with whitish or blackish clouds scattered here and there." 
But why is the sugar sweet and the lemon sour, the grass 
green, and the sky blue, but the cloud white or gray ? Com- 
mon-sense is nescient in answer to these inquiries, and must 
ever remain so. Or it may substitute teleological reasons for 
causal action, and thus explain further from another point of 
view ; but nothing characteristic of the constitution of these 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 381 

objects, which shall determine the effects they have upon our 
consciousness, appears to the observer who maintains the 
point of view of ordinary perception. Science, however, 
attempts the answers to such questions. For one of them it 
proposes an elaborate theory of optics with measurements of 
wave-lengths in the hypothetical substrate called ether (a 
most marvellous being) ; this theory it joins on to a more 
doubtful theory of the chemico-physical value of pigments 
in the retina of the eye ; and it then finds its way fur- 
ther by the path of an even more doubtful theory of nerve- 
commotions in certain cerebral centres, where, alas ! every- 
thing disappears from the view of the scientific observer in 
a bottomless pit of metaphysics concerning the "relations" 
of matter and mind. And as to the scientific explanation 
of the ordinary sensations of taste, nothing is known worth 
seriously taking into account. 

Suppose, however, that we had all such mysteries cleared 
up, and a straight and traceable path laid from the centre of 
the solar system, or from the piece of matter put into the 
mouth, to the psychoses of visual or gustatory sort. This 
would indeed be a splendid and highly desirable extension of 
scientific knowledge ; but it would also extend correspond- 
ingly the sphere over which the darkness of an impenetrable 
nescience would reign. Why should a particular wave-length 
of luminiferous ether, after getting itself translated in the 
form of definite determinations of chemico-physical processes 
and specific kinds of nerve-commotions, be finally correlated 
with sensations of blue, green, white, black, etc. ; while other 
disturbances of the molecules of ordinary matter, after excit- 
ing similar chemico-physical and neural changes, appear in 
consciousness with representative psychoses of the quite dif- 
ferent olfactory or gustatory order ? To questions of this 
kind the growing science of sense-perception offers no an- 
swer; and there is little or no prospect of any successful 
attempt, in the remotest future, at any answer. Or, at least, 



382 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 

if these or any other more precise terms in which the prob- 
lems are proposed for explanation should receive light from 
the discovery of new facts, the expanding domain of certified 
knowledge would still be given to us as covering a bottomless 
abyss of unexplained and inexplicable facts. All answers to 
the question Why ? as applied to the correlation of particular 
facts, leave us in the agnostic attitude as to the ultimate rea- 
sons for the correlation itself. We know that so it is ; but 
why it is so, we neither know nor discern any prospect of 
knowing. Indeed, as there has already been occasion to re- 
mark before, the progress of modern science is extending the 
realm of accepted but unexplained facts far faster than the 
correlation of those facts under either old or new princi- 
ples of explanation. And thus the very nature of knowledge 
is such that the limit of all sceptical inquiry is set in the 
confession of mystery and of nescience, as well as in the pro- 
fession of formulas under which the facts may be regarded 
as sequences from some common ground. 

When, too, attention is turned from the particular facts to 
those generalized modes of the behavior of things which are 
called " natural laws," the most sceptical inquiry appears lim- 
ited, on the one hand, by assured and trustworthy cognitions, 
and, on the other hand, by a complete and seemingly perma- 
nent condition of nescience. This appears the more strange 
from the point of view held by science as to the nature and 
signification of the causal principle. Why violets should 
emit one characteristic odor, and the reddish-brown substance 
obtained from a bag behind the navel of the male of a certain 
species of deer should emit a quite different but equally char- 
acteristic odor, is not a question that science can at present 
satisfactorily answer. Scientific curiosity would be gratified, 
however, if these facts could be brought into connection with 
others, and if some so-called law of the chemical constitution 
of odors could be brought to light. 

When we ask why the arrow shot from the bow, or the 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 383 

stone loosened from the coping, or the meteor caught within 
the magic influences of this terrestrial sphere, all agree in 
falling, although by very different lines, to the ground, the 
law of gravitation is the answer to the inquiry for all three. 
And not only so, but also does this law embrace in its com- 
pelling folds the planets and their satellites, and even some 
of the remoter stars. But why should masses of matter 
attract each other at all ; and why directly as the mass and 
inversely as the square of their distance apart, rather than 
in accordance with any one of an indefinite number of other 
different formulas ? In spite of the many and persistent 
efforts made to answer this question, there is still only one 
answer possible : " We do not know ; and we have not the 
least glimmer of a reason why." Just such a confession 
of nescience must always limit that knowledge with which 
science puts us into possession in the shape of its so-called 
laws. Concerning the causal explanation of the most assured 
and triumphant generalizations of science, our agnosticism 
is as complete and invincible as it is concerning the most 
startling and unique exceptions to those laws. The law 
of gravitation is as mysterious as is the exceptional be- 
havior of "1830 Groombridge " in apparent contravention 
of that law. The expanding of water at just the degree of 
32 Fahr. is actually no more an incomprehensible puzzle in 
etiology than is its contraction all the way from 212° Fahr. 
down to that degree. 

Common-sense — it was said some time ago — "may sub- 
stitute teleological reasons for causal action, and thus explain 
further from another point of view." Science is accustomed 
to proclaim that it cannot take this other point of view. It 
must confine itself to asking why, in a way to indicate the need 
of complicating further the mechanism, unless the new fact 
can be brought into terms of harmony with the formulas gen- 
eralized from other facts. Common-sense is often satisfied 
with the naive suggestion that, perhaps, some good end may 



384 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 

be reached by departing from the strict and unswerving appli- 
cation of the general formula. It may be, for example, that 
the ideal purpose of the universe will be better served if all the 
members of the solar system do, for a very long series of ages, 
obey the law of gravitation, and if 1830 Groombridge does 
not. Or if water follows the law of contracting down to about 
32° Fahr., and then — "He knows why" — all of a sudden 
departs from that law, the earth will be more fit for the habi- 
tation of man, etc. And here a flood of light upon the physi- 
cal constitution of things, as it is actually known to exist, 
seems to burst in upon the sensitive mind. Such anthropo- 
morphism the strictly scientific construction of the nature of 
Reality refuses to accept. Science has its own limits to its 
own anthropomorphism ; and these compel it to avow an 
agnostic attitude of mind toward the ultimate reason and 
significance of all natural laws. But, here again, it has been 
clearly shown that the conceptions employed in the statement 
of these laws, as well as the relations affirmed in the several 
combinations of the conceptions, are all patterned after the 
analogy of the most fundamental experiences of the self- 
conscious Self. The only way, then, to validate these laws 
for a really existent World of things is to accept the postu- 
late that its being and transactions are somehow truly repre- 
sented in human experience. 

In this way, then, does the weary dove, sent through that 
window of the senses which opens toward the endless expanse 
of unexplored waters, return to its own ark within the soul 
of man. The so-called illusions of the world of sense are 
known as illusions only if our sceptical examination of the 
sensuous deliverances is constantly accompanied and justified 
by a faith in human cognitive powers. And after this faith 
itself, and the grounds on which it reposes, and the springs 
from which it proceeds to enlarge the sphere of science, have 
been subjected to sceptical inquiry, the barriers that are a 
combination of indubitable cognition and irremovable nesci- 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 385 

ence, are only pushed a little way further back. Thus the 
final state of the case is reached, and the last word which a 
critical philosophy of knowledge can utter is spoken. The 
soul knows itself with an increasing clearness and fulness of 
content ; and it knows that somewhat not itself is given to it 
to know, with all its own powers sharing duly in the activities 
of sense-perception. Such are the limits of its scepticism both 
by positive cognition and by nescience. The limits of its positive 
knowledge are extended only upon these terms, — that it accept 
these objects of its knowledge as somehow forming a unitary 
system for the communication of this other and larger Self 
with its own Self. 

After what has been said in the preceding chapters * it is 
scarcely necessary to discuss in detail the self-limiting nature 
of scepticism and agnosticism as applied to the epistemologi- 
cal problem of self-knowledge. Here the sceptical attitude 
very speedily receives a check to its progress in any direction. 
Do I raise and maintain a doubt as to the here-and-now 
being of my Self? Whatever my general epistemological 
position may be, and whatever interpretation I may give to the 
conceptions current in every form of metaphysical discussion, 
— even the most agnostic and scornful, — there are fixed 
limits for this region within which doubt cannot even lift up 
its head. Whatever you mean by " knowledge," in that 
meaning, at the worst, I know that I here and now am. 
Whatever your conception of " being," you cannot deny the 
validity of the proposition, I here and now am. The same 
thing is true concerning the remembered existence of Self. 
Meaning for the word " knowledge," or material for the most 
meagre conception of any sort of " existence," cannot be had 
without admitting so much of indubitable self-cognition as 
this. But this is itself, at one and the same time, the indubi- 
table affirmation of a positive knowledge, and the setting of a 
limit of nescience to the process of sceptical inquiry. 

1 See also "Philosophy of Mind," chapters iii.-vi., and xi. 
25 



386 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 

The limits of both indubitable conviction and of nescience 
must, so far as we have any present information, or prospect of 
information in time to come, be recognized as absolutely irre- 
movable. They belong, indeed, to the very nature and growth 
of cognitive faculty. The cognitive judgments in which are 
expressed the answers to the questions, " Do I here and now 
exist ? " " Did I exist in that yesterday, when, as I remem- 
ber, I thought, felt, or acted in such a manner ? " " Have I, 
in any sort, been one and the same Self from the remembered 
' then ' to the self-conscious ; now ' ? " — are so clear and posi- 
tive that no higher standpoint, or profounder and more compre- 
hensive view of truth and reality, can possibly be gained from 
which to gainsay or dispute these judgments. They fix the 
irremovable barriers to scepticism in its attack upon the 
truth of self-knowledge. But as we contemplate these ques- 
tions and their indubitable answers critically, we find both 
questions and answers freighted with a great load of mys- 
teries, which psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics are 
by their combined efforts quite impotent to lessen or to 
remove. Nothing remains for us but the answers " I do not 
know," and " Knowledge here seems denied to all men," when 
these questions are proposed. 

How is memory at all possible, — that present phase of con- 
sciousness which carries with it the unique guarantee of an 
existence of Self and of Things in the past, and so itself 
makes possible a continuity both of cognitive development and 
also of the being of the objects of cognition ? Psychology is 
destined to remain agnostic in answer to this question. The 
wisest students of mental phenomena are the readiest, not to 
place its ultimate solution in " brain-memory " or in experi- 
mental determination of the " laws of association," but to 
confess nescience when problems of this order are proposed 
for scientific treatment. How, indeed, in the last analysis, is 
knowledge possible ; and who will vouch for the extra-mental 
validity of that primitive and fundamental conviction which is 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 387 

furnished by the mental process of knowledge itself ? From 
the point of view of genetic psychology we may expound and 
glorify the descriptive history of cognitive faculty. From the 
point of view of epistemology we may analyze and discuss criti- 
cally the maturing functions and the necessary implicates of 
this faculty. But the results of all this must be expressed in 
a series of propositions : " I know," or " I do not know ; " "I 
think or opine this ; " or " I do not think, and guess not, that." 
Such is the nature of the science of psychology, and such is 
the nature of the philosophy of knowledge. Nor does psy- 
chology differ in this respect from other sciences, or episte- 
mology from other branches of philosophy. Yet the more 
intense and thorough scientific inquiry becomes, the quicker 
does it pass over the road that leads at last to the veil through 
which man cannot see. The only answer now left to the 
causal a Why ? " is a confession of nescience. " I do not 
know " is all that science or philosophy can say to inquiries 
after further explanations under this principle. But if we 
will admit to the confidences of our speculative thinking the 
question of the teleological " Why ? " we may perhaps frame a 
rational hypothesis as to what lies beyond that veil. 

Epistemological agnosticism, like sceptical inquiry, is by 
nature self -limiting ; it is also encompassed by the limits on 
the one hand of assured cognitions, and on the other hand of 
reasonable and helpful faiths and practical postulates. In- 
deed, in pursuing the course of sceptical and presupposition- 
less inquiry through all the chapters of this book, we have 
been setting positive and invincible limitations to epistemo- 
logical agnosticism. More than once has it appeared that the 
alternative reached by a course of reasoning which is conse- 
quential, and which goes to the heart of the ultimate prob- 
lems, forces this alternative : Either an agnosticism which 
amounts to complete philosophical nihilism, and which ends 
in absurdity so absolute as to be unstatable, or else the ad- 
mission that human knowledge guarantees the transcendental 



388 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 

use and validity of the categories and of the ontological im- 
plicates which analysis shows to be necessary " momenta " of 
all knowledge. As the ultimate outcome of epistemological 
criticism it has appeared that the extremest form of the 
agnostic proposition itself assumes a whole World of Reality, 
— Self and not-selves interrelated in quasi-systematic fashion, 
which may be truthfully represented by the human mind. 

For let us now briefly reconsider the different meanings 
which it is possible to give to the " cognitive judgment " of the 
agnostic. Certainly his judgment bears a distinctly cognitive 
form ; since its proposition is, not merely " I doubt," but in its 
minimum of trans-subjective reference, " I do not know." But 
this " I-do-not-know " is itself an experience which is preg- 
nant with meaning only as it carries within itself all the life 
from which springs a world of transcendent reality. For 
the " I " which avows itself to be in this state of nescience is 
as truly a self-known Self as is the confident Ego of the most 
credulous dogmatist. The state of nescience, or wow-knowl- 
edge, in which it knows itself to be is meaningless except 
as contrasted with the memory-image of previous states of 
knowledge. Indeed, so far as epistemology, in distinction from 
psychology and logic, is concerned, the judgment " I-do-not- 
know " is not to be distinguished, with respect to its grounds 
or its implicates, from the judgment " I-know." Now, it has 
been explained in great detail that all cognitive judgment 
necessarily implies the existence of a number of beings other 
than the Self, to some of whom — namely, the other selves — 
it always appeals, as furnishing in their nature common char- 
acteristics with our own, and thus as acknowledging with us 
some objective standard of truth ; so that the " I-do-not-know " 
is an affirmation of an experience which is as truly transcen- 
dent, in a legitimate sense of that word, as any cognitive 
experience can possibly be. 

" I do not know " may be a sincerely modest and truthful 
affirmation of the experience of the individual cognitive soul ; 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 389 

and it may be accompanied by the proper feelings, and made 
in a commendable spirit, when applied to problems of episte- 
mology. It may signify a state of nescience, out of which the 
soul may reasonably expect to emerge, if only it will follow 
good guidance along the path of self-criticism. Even if any 
individual agnostic prefers to plunge sideways out of this path 
of careful inquiry, in the faith that he may somehow " feel " 
his way to shelter from the gathering storm, his case is not 
hopeless. For, as will soon be shown clearly, all cognition 
has its teleological aspect and its ethical and sesthetical 
factors ; and, although self-knowledge is the only sure path 
to the truth about all knowledge, many men are, by constitu- 
tion or by habit, not of robust frame and steady head enough 
to climb the heights of assurance by this path. So, then, the 
experience of all alike, when the narrative of that experience 
is finally made up and fully disclosed, teaches the same truth 
with regard to the limits of agnosticism. 

Suppose, however, — and this is for the most part the case 
of the avowed agnostic regarding epistemological problems, — 
that the judgment affirming nescience means somewhat more 
than appears upon its surface. Now, this " I-do-not-know " 
may mean also " You do not know," and even " Nobody 
knows, or ever will know, or ever can know." This is nesci- 
ence venturing into the field of epistemological philosophy, 
and laying down a universal proposition. But it requires no 
critical insight, or work of analysis, in order to show that such 
nescience is the most self-confident and comprehensive kind 
of knowledge, if only it be regarded from certain perfectly 
unprejudiced points of view. Such an agnostic may always 
be asked, with the most complacent of countenances, " What 
is it that you and I and all men are constitutionally doomed 
to remain ignorant about?" The reply, if it is to be stated 
in terms that can be defended, cannot possibly include any of 
those laws, factors, implicates, or faiths and postulates, which 
our previous critical discussion has shown to belong of invin- 



390 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 



cible right to all human knowledge. Indeed such an agnostic 
assumes to know even more than our presuppositionless theory 
of knowledge undertakes to guarantee : Other minds exist, and 
are subject to like limitations with the mind of the agnostic ; 
the laws of these minds, and the cognitive relations they bear 
to that Reality wiiich even the Unknown, the X, is assumed 
to have, are going to remain forever unchanged ; the nature 
of these minds and of their cognitive processes, together with 
the appropriate feelings of doubt and despair, have already 
been explored so deeply and tested so thoroughly that no 
more of latent vital capacity for cognition is even to be sus- 
pected. Moreover, there is assumed a positive and conclu- 
sive knowledge that the common mental representation of the 
reality of the world of things is not indeed what it claims to 
be, — namely, cognition ; it is mere sensation, mere ideation, 
mere abstract thinking, and cannot be the truth in the sense 
which men usually attach to that word. But who does not 
see that so much nescience as this involves a vast amount 
of the most positive and comprehensive propositions, which, 
instead of confessing a sceptical attitude of mind toward 
Truth and Reality, the rather manifest an attitude of extreme 
dogmatism concealed under agnostic guise ? 

If, however, the more absolute and universal agnostic for- 
mulas are understood as limited in relation to the positive 
content and proper implicates of all knowledge, they take on a 
totally different character. That not a few questions may be 
asked about knowledge and reality to which the reply must 
always be an unequivocal declaration of nescience, few 
students of epistemology and metaphysics would think of 
denying. Epistemology and metaphysics concur in showing 
that this is necessarily so. But here again these very scepti- 
cal inquiries and their agnostic answers are based upon a 
foundation of assured, positive knowledge. Some things I 
know indubitably in answer to the sceptical inquiry as to the 
Being of the really Existent ; some things also as to what 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 391 

Knowledge is, and as to what of Reality my knowledge impli- 
cates and guarantees. Without recognition of these fixed 
points, as it were, in the flux of the cognitive processes, the 
agnostic answers to other questions could neither be reached 
nor even stated. 

To return now to the illustration of which Kant makes, for 
his theory of nescience, such telling use : It appears that the 
case as between our cognitive minds and the transcendental 
being of the world is not at all as this great thinker made it to 
be. The island of our cognition is not a well-defined amount 
of ready-made " stuff," already completely explored by episte- 
mology and mapped out in unobjectionable and unalterable 
outlines, within which no increment of extra-mental existence 
can, as it were, enter. Nor does Reality stand related to this 
island of cognition as a boundless and wholly impenetrable 
ocean, forever covered with a veil of mist and fog. What 
Kant means by " the island " is an ever-expanding life of the 
Self ; and this life may — it is, at least, conceivable — extend its 
self-knowledge indefinitely ; but it always knows itself as real 
and as standing in actually experienced relations to a system 
of other beings, that are known as not-itself. Instead, then, 
of the island being impenetrable to Reality, its very life and 
growth consists in processes of the absorption and assimila- 
tion, so to speak, of the real with the expanding Self. And 
the surrounding ocean is thereby more and more cleared up 
for vision from that island, if only one will take the loftier 
and more cloudless points of view. For the ocean and the 
island are, indeed, not throughout to be identified ; neither do 
they run parallel to each other, like the two tracks of a rail- 
road bed. But they are parts of one World ; and they are 
known in one experience as belonging to the unitary Being 
of that one world. And what the nature of the ocean is, 
beyond the many inlets and bays with which it interpenetrates 
the island, and beyond the line where the fog and mist re- 
treat on the sunniest of our days, may be conjectured, bravely 



392 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 

and rationally, from these better points of view. For the 
faith which takes us through the fog and the mist is not of the 
nature of an irrational plunge into a tide where no swimmer 
can hope to survive ; it is only, after all, of a nature common 
to the postulate of an analogy between the Self and its 
World, — by confidence in which all the particular sciences 
progressively make conquests of this one world. 

It appears, then, that the sceptical and agnostic attitudes 
of mind toward truth in general, as well as toward those par- 
ticular truths in the establishment and critical reconstruction 
of which the very growth of the body of science consists, 
belong to the life of the cognitive soul; but they are not 
attitudes in which the soul may rest and be satisfied with 
conclusions that follow upon the view of experience from 
these attitudes alone. Scepticism, or that inquiry which 
originates in the spirit of doubt before the propositions of an 
uncritical dogmatism, is the fit incitement, the rational priv- 
ilege, and the seal of dignity, for human knowledge. It is 
limited both by that fuller and more certain cognition, and 
also by that enlightened agnosticism to which it points out 
the way. 

"It is man's privilege to doubt, 
If so be that from doubt at length, 
Truth may stand forth unmoved of change, 
An image with profulgent brows, 
And perfect limbs, as from the storm 
Of running fires and fluid range 
Of lawless airs, at last stood out 
This excellence and solid form 
Of constant beauty." 

Agnosticism, as distinguished from scepticism, is either a 
truthful confession of a temporary and curable condition of 
the individual mind, or else it is a positive and universal 
proposition which itself aspires to the position of a well- 
grounded and comprehensive cognitive judgment. In the 
latter case, however, it cannot possibly deny for itself the 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 393 

ontological significance which every universal denial, and, 
indeed, every negative cognitive judgment, necessarily pos- 
sesses. Here the principles of non-contradiction and of suffi- 
cient reason, of the transcendental use of the categories in all 
universal propositions, and of the ontological implicates that 
inhere in those processes which terminate in the cognitive 
judgment, have their most rigid and complete application. 
All such principles set invincible limits to agnosticism, which 
are of positive and supreme epistemological value. But, on 
the other hand, all human knowledge is, not so much rigidly 
encompassed and limited by the unknown as interconnected 
with and based upon presuppositions, postulates, and unanalyz- 
able data of fact, concerning the origin and causal explana- 
tion of which no answer whatever can be given. As all 
science explains only by reference to the unexplained and the 
inexplicable, so a theory of knowledge is philosophically 
grounded only as it admits that much of its critical effort ends 
in nescience. In view of this it is customary and appropriate 
to say that the process of explaining by giving reasons, and 
by connecting one " moment " of experience with another, 
cannot go on forever. But what we have been trying to show 
is something more fundamental than this. The human mind 
does not refuse the effort to explain because it gets tired at 
some point or other in moving along the line of that effort ; nor 
is the task of epistemology like that of milking a he-goat into 
a sieve. The rather is our conclusion this : The positive char- 
acter and indubitable ontological validity of human knowledge, 
but also its limited character and inevitable failure to frame 
the full and perfectly clear picture of the extra-mentally existent 
World, must both be recognized and combined in an epistemo- 
logical doctrine which shall claim the warrant of all our experi- 
ence. A "trans-subjective minimum" is always found, left 
over, as it were, from the most corroding tests of a sceptical 
and agnostic criticism. This remnant, " which shall be saved " 
from the fires of doubt and the frosts of nescience, has always 



394 SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 

enough of life in it to generate anew a system of confident 
cognitions touching the nature and meaning of Reality as 
given to men to know. And when the higher life of conduct, 
of art, and of religion, is breathed into this remnant, it soon 
takes on a diviner and more clearly recognizable shape. But 
the revelations which it then makes of its own nature are only 
for eyes that have been touched with another Spirit than that 
which fitly rules over the course of a critical epistemology ; 
although such a critical epistemology, if it reaches a point 
near the goal of the fullest and worthiest self-cognition, pre- 
pares the way for such revelations. Nor is there any so very 
marked break in the course, when we pass from knowledge of 
Self and of Things to so-called faith in the Supreme and Ulti- 
mate Reality. 

At this point, it is not only interesting, but suggestive of a 
truth which merits and will receive further examination, to 
notice again that scepticism and agnosticism receive most of 
their needful correction in the life of feeling and of action. 
The rights of philosophical criticism must never be discredited 
or denied ; and after having taken so much pains to think our 
way through the clouds of doubt and nescience, we are not 
going to fall back again upon the refuge of mere feeling, or of 
a doing that is irrational and does not strive, as far as possible, 
at self-understanding. But knowledge itself has been seen to 
be something more than mere thinking. The rather is it an 
attitude of the entire cognitive soul toward the reality with 
which the soul has commerce in the act of cognition. If those 
who " dabble in the fount of fictive tears " and thus " divorce 
the feeling from her mate the deed," fail of the highest truth, 
so also do those who forget the question and answer of Goethe, 
" How can a man learn to know himself ? By reflection never, 
only by action." It is by having actual transactions with, by 
handling, as it were, ourselves and other things, that we 
know that we and they are, and what we and they are. 1 From 

1 Compare Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, pp. 512 f. 



SCEPTICISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND CRITICISM 395 

this point of view it is not mere juggling with words, when it 
is claimed that the practical confidence of men in their cogni- 
tions of themselves, of other men, and of the world of things, 
gives the lie to all professions of a sceptical idealism or of 
a complete and consistent agnosticism. 

" There is no Unbelief! 
Whoever says to-morrow, the unknown, 
The future, trusts that power alone 
Nor dares disown." 

Nor is such faith to be spoken of as though it were a foreigner 
that can find " room " in the mind only after knowledge 
has been " removed." It is the handmaid of knowledge. 
And the deed which it motives, and the reward which follows 
only upon the deed, are the fitting expression and appointed 
adjunct to the growing life of cognition. 



CHAPTER XIV 

ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 

INHERE is only one conceivable way in which the most 
-*■ thoroughly sceptical examination of the problem of 
knowledge could end in complete agnosticism as to any 
trans-subjective value for the functioning and the products of 
our cognitive faculties. To follow that way one must demon- 
strate beyond doubt the existence of genuine " antinomies " 
in the very heart of reason itself. Perhaps, however, the 
theoretical outcome of the employment of reason as compelled 
to be self-critical, but doomed to reach so unhappy a con- 
clusion, would better be described as a peculiar kind of scep- 
ticism. Dogmatic universal agnosticism it could not well be ; 
for, as has been shown in the preceding chapter, such agnos- 
ticism affirms a vast amount of assured cognitions, although 
in a quasi-unconscious and self-contradictory way. 

But suppose that the ultimate result of our critical inquiries 
— incited, urged on, and guided by a restless and determined 
spirit of doubt — is the discovery of fundamental and irre- 
solvable contradictions, both of an epistemological and of an 
ontological reference. Suppose, on the one hand, that we find 
the very laws of our own cognitive life compelling us to think 
or believe true what they themselves, when considered from 
other and equally tenable points of view, show cannot possibly 
be known to be true, or what must even be held to be false. 
Suppose, on the other hand, that the Reality which appears to 
be given to us, with clearness and self-consistency, by certain 
forms of cognition, shows to the more searching analysis of 



ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 397 

philosophy certain inherent and irremovable contradictions. 
For example, It must be known as both " One " and " Many," 
— in meanings of these two words which are carefully adapted 
to make them positively inapplicable to the same subject. Or, 
It must be known as never changing or in any way subjected 
to the differentiations which the phenomenal reality of things 
displays ; and yet also known as ceaselessly changing and 
as itself the subject and ground of all change. Or, again, It 
must be known as Absolute in the sense of being wholly 
unrelated to aught else and quite incapable of any self-differ- 
entiation which shall bring it into a system of self-relations ; 
and yet also known as the subject and ground of all relations. 
Or, once more, It must not be known or thought of as personal, 
because personality is essentially limitation ; and yet every 
applicable conception which we can possibly form in our most 
happy moments of insight and aspiration, as a matter of fact 
is, and as sound doctrine of epistemology must be, taken 
from our experience with our own self-known Selves. 

Now, it is tolerably plain that any issue to the process of 
sceptical inquiry similar to the several conclusions given 
above might possibly force this alternative upon the mind 
experiencing it : either resolutely to maintain the sceptical as 
distinguished from the dogmatically agnostic attitude, or else 
to get over into the attitude of affirmation in some other than 
the critical way. It is a fact of no little epistemological sig- 
nificance in the history of philosophy that most reflective 
thinkers have preferred to espouse the latter member of this 
alternative. Reasons for this fact, which lie deep in the na- 
ture of man, are not wanting. It is not a pleasant or satisfac- 
tory condition for the human mind to be consciously turning 
over and over the problem of knowledge, — like a squirrel 
pawing a revolving cage, and looking through the bars upon 
tempting fields outlying, but with the conviction that cage, 
and outlying fields, and the being who is ceaselessly turning 
and looking are all alike parts of one phantasmagoria. Both 



398 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 

the heart and the mind of man revolt at this. But nothing 
else is strictly logical for one who discovers " antinomies " in 
his own cognitive faculty — in the most appropriate meaning 
of that much abused and ambiguous word. Just here, there- 
fore, the influence of practical considerations is apt to become 
very strong. The way out of the cage seems, in some sort, 
to open for " faith ; " or else the necessity, if not the ration- 
ality, is discovered of acting as though the truth were on one 
side or the other of the still unyielding antinomy. This prac- 
tical solution of the alleged antinomies of reason is apt to be 
accomplished either with considerable show of violence and 
some scornful reference to the futility of metaphysics as an 
ontological affair ; or else it puts forth the sweet assumption 
of superiority to all considerations of a merely reflective 
kind, and poses as an attainment of great ethical and 
religious value. 

It scarcely need be pointed out to any one who has thought- 
fully followed the course of our critical investigations up to 
this point that we cannot accept such an alternative without 
abandoning all the best results attained by these investiga- 
tions. To speak truth, we have scant respect for the alterna- 
tive. We do not find ourselves forced to take it, or to adopt 
any other form of a similar alternative. For we believe that 
all such " antinomies " — that is, all alleged contradictions in 
the fundamental laws of cognition, or as between those " cate- 
gories " whose ontological application is necessary to the con- 
struction of a conception of the really existent World — are 
fictions of the critic's imagination. In other words, they are 
only spurious antinomies. This negative conclusion, with its 
justifiable scorn, in answer to the agnostic scorn for meta- 
physics, or to the weakly sidling out of the difficult path 
of criticism into the refuge of a merely emotional and practi- 
cal faith, is defensible on grounds of history. As to the 
" family of faith," we, too, claim an inalienable right to be 
counted among its members. As to " confidence in reason," 



ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 399 

it is a reasonable and prudent confidence of this sort which 
has been confirmed and expounded by following the course of 
a presuppositionless criticism. As to a proposal to " divorce " 
the two, we will hear nothing of it. No irreconcilable quarrel 
has yet been discovered between faith and reason, but rather, 
their indissoluble union in the very nature of the cognitive 
process itself. And the history of human reflective thinking 
shows that the mind of man, both in the actual development 
of knowledge and in its maturer judgment respecting the the- 
oretical outcome of a criticism of knowledge, does not rest in 
this alternative. 

The full historical disproof of the existence of real antino- 
mies in the cognitive functions of the human mind, or in its 
reasoned conception of the really Existent, cannot, of course, 
be undertaken in this treatise. We shall, however, make a 
somewhat careful testing of several alleged examples as pro- 
posed by two writers on this subject. Of all critics who have 
discovered antinomies in human reason as the result of a 
critical examination of its nature, Kant is undoubtedly at once 
the most thorough, subtle, and seductive, if not convincing. 
It would be difficult to put the doctrine of antinomies into a 
more defensible form, whether as regarded from the theoreti- 
cal or from the practical point of view, than that given to it 
in the "Transcendental Dialectic" (the "logic of illusion," 
Die Logik des Scheins). The recent work of Mr. Bradley on 
" Appearance and Reality " propounds a similar doctrine in 
even a more unmistakable, but cruder and less elaborate form. 
One or two of the special examples brought forward by these 
two advocates of irreconcilable contradictions in the faculty 
of cognition as applied to extra-mental Reality will suffice for 
illustration and enforcement of our negative position toward 
all antinomies. 

The examples both of Kant and of Mr. Bradley are not anti- 
nomies at all ; they are, rather, spurious contradictions which 
can always be got up when abstract conceptions of more or less 



400 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 

doubtful empirical origin and of perverted or mutilated con- 
struction are hypostasized and brought into relations that are 
themselves either fictitious or abstracted inconsiderately from 
the relations of real individual things. Of other examples that 
might be culled from history, — for they grow thick enough 
along either side of the path of epistemological criticism, — 
there would seem to be no need. Conclusions like those found 
in the unhappy and largely absurd attempt of Dean Mansel to 
recommend faith in God by involving the conception of Him 
as Absolute in hopeless contradictions may well enough be 
left to feel the force of the treatment accorded to this particu- 
lar example by John Stuart Mill ; for, although this quondam 
positivist left a posthumous declaration of his personal faith 
in God, he freely and indignantly consigned himself to eternal 
perdition rather than believe in such a Divine Being as the 
juggling of ecclesiastical agnosticism had commended to him. 

But before illustrating our unequivocal denial of all alleged 
antinomies, it is necessary to review briefly the affirmative 
position to which the critical process has led us. It has been 
made clear that while, from the psychological point of view, 
every cognition is a process in consciousness, and subjective 
both as to content and function-wise, no cognition is merely 
subjective ; on the contrary, the very nature of cognition, epis- 
temologically considered, is tfr^ms-subjective and ontological 
in its reference and its implicates. Speaking with a broader 
and more inclusive view before us, experience is indeed always 
capable of being represented as, for every individual mind, its 
very own and no other. And yet, in every cognitive experi- 
ence, it — that is, the experience considered as a single "mo- 
ment " in the flux of consciousness — is itself transcended. 
No cognition is of itself as a mere momentary state ; it is of 
some existence which must be regarded as not dependent for 
its being upon that state. The possibility of transcending 
experience by knowledge can be denied only if we refuse to 
enlarge the meaning of experience itself so as to include both 



ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 401 

the implicates which criticism of the processes of knowledge 
discovers, and as well the legitimate conclusions, as to the 
nature of the Self and of Things, which result from the think- 
ing that enters into all cognitive experience. So that when 
scepticism seems about to bring us to the position of complete 
agnosticism, or of the positivism which denies the possibility 
of transcending experience, it always destroys itself in the 
depths of absurdity to which it has sunk. 

In connection with this critical result, the transcendental 
use of the so-called " categories " is vindicated. Among these 
categories Relation and Change are, in some sort, supreme. 
We know that relations really are, and that changes actually 
take place. Indeed, this proposition is not itself debatable 
and matter of argument ; but to dispute it is to enter upon an 
absurd attempt, by an affirmation of nescience, to overcome, 
in making the affirmation, the constitutional forms of cog- 
nition itself. What it is " really to be related," and what it 
is " actually to change," is given in the indubitable experience 
with the Self, as really changing its own states in dependence 
upon immediately cognized or reasonably inferred relations to 
things. But if to dispute the trans-subjective reference and 
validity of these categories is absurd, to explain them in terms 
that are simpler and more intelligible is impossible. All expla- 
nation, in other words, assumes and makes use of the same 
categories ; and all explanation makes use of them with the 
assumption that they are valid in reality. Now, this concrete 
reality, really related and actually changing, is the reality 
which we immediately and indubitably know. Reality — in 
general, and spelled with a capital R — may be a mere ab- 
straction ; and to oppose it to the known reality, after the 
latter has been degraded by calling it "Appearance," may be 
equivalent to an act of highway robbery. Such an act is no 
less indefensible because the proceeds are subsequently handed 
over to some ethical or religious Reformatory. But if the 
question be pressed, What further is this Reality, thus known 

26 



402 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 

as really related and actually changing ? we can only answer : 
" It is the Self and that which the Self knows, both negatively 
as not-self and positively in so far as it appears analogous to 
the Self, — in an indefinite variety of relations and an endless 
series of changes." 

The detailed reconciliation of this transcendental use of the 
categories of relation and change with the conception of some- 
thing permanent and unchanging, belongs to a critical meta- 
physics. But the detailed examination already given to the 
principles of identity and of sufficient reason, not only in their 
logical and subjective aspects but also in their ontological and 
trans-subjective references, forbids that conceptions of Sub- 
stance, Law, Identity, Unity, Causal Nexus, etc., should be so 
constructed as to create antinomies between them and the con- 
crete facts of the life of cognition ; that is, valid conceptions 
of substance, law, identity, unity, causal nexus, etc., must be 
framed upon the same basis of cognition as that in which are 
employed, so to speak, the categories of relation and of change. 
Speaking in a more general way, contradictions cannot be the- 
oretically introduced that do not actually find themselves 
resolved in our cognitive experience with ourselves and with 
things. This known world is known ; it is known really to 
be. Antinomies between it and the world of abstract think- 
ing — whether conceived of as oppositions and contradictions 
between "phenomenal reality" and "noumena" (Ding-an- 
sich), or between "Appearance" and "Reality" — are not 
genuine antinomies. And if agnosticism is to return upon 
us in the shape of rational antinomies, then, as was said of 
the unfortunate into whom an increase of demons entered, 
" the last state of that man is worse than the first." 

This brief resume, however, is quite sufficient to remind us 
how the appearance of irreconcilable contradictions may 
emerge to a criticism that is one-sided, and that fails to 
grasp the essence and the significance of knowledge in its to- 
tality. For here, it may be said, is the very hearth and source 



ALLEGED ''ANTINOMIES" 403 

of antinomies : Knowledge is subjective and yet trans-sub- 
jective ; it is infra-mental phenomenon, and yet it implicates 
extra-mental reality. The categories, or modes of the function- 
ing of mind in all knowledge, are capable of being regarded as 
purely formal; they afford themes for psychology and logic 
to discuss, just as though no question of a real world were 
anyhow implied in the discussion. Yet some at least of these 
so-called categories are the very essential and inescapable 
forms of all the reality about which aught can be known or' 
even conceived. 

We may not indeed affirm off-hand that the Reality is just 
as we find ourselves compelled by the laws of our understanding 
to think it ; but what that is unthinkable and inconceivable 
can lay any claim, at the door of either our understandings 
or our hearts, to a place in our world of real beings and of 
actual transactions ? Now, if the terms for such oppositions 
as these are correctly understood, they suggest different 
modes of regarding our one cognitive experience, instead of 
irreconcilable oppositions in the very nature of that experience. 
The antinomies which they suggest are solved practically, up 
to the limit which marks off the agnostic attitude toward 
the foundations of all experience, by every special act of cog- 
nitive experience. To know anything is to solve these antino- 
mies. For every act of knowledge may — nay, must — be 
regarded as both subjective and trans-subjective, intra-mentul 
phenomenon, and e xtr a-ment&\ly referent. Each cognition is 
an individual, concrete experience which transcends itself, 
regarded as individual and concrete. It gives to conscious- 
ness some portion of the world as its idea ; and also as other 
and more than its idea, — as Reality in action over against 
the ideating Self. 

Now, if certain abstract statements or laws seem to follow 
from the facts of cognitive experience, which appear to be 
contradictory or " antinomic " in the deeper meaning of that 
latter word, we shall do well to remember : " Actuality has 



404 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 

ways and means to make that possible which looks to us as 
though it were afflicted with irreconcilable contradictions." 
This practical solution of seeming contradictories is actually 
accomplished by the human mind for itself every time it pos- 
its, in a feeling-full and voluntary way, a cognitive judgment. 
Body and soul, the Self (as it were, intellect, feeling, and will), 
takes possession of the extra-mentally real, and makes it its 
own. Hence the agnosticism of the idealist or positivist who 
denies the actuality of this reconciling experience must be 
satisfied to place its own alleged antinomies upon a basis 
of logical abstractions which, in their turn, have no other 
ground than these very acts of cognition that afford the prac- 
tical solution of all such antinomies. 

Ordinarily, however, the antinomies proposed by the scep- 
tical critic are not the products of so deeply seated a disease. 
They are not even to be considered as " antinomies " at all in 
the sense in which their discoverer would have us believe he 
uses this word. This observation fitly leads to a brief dis- 
cussion of the several possible kinds of contradiction which 
may be found lurking in the alleged cognitions of men. That 
facts of cognitive experience, quoad facts, can contradict each 
other, no one would think of claiming seriously. Statements 
of alleged facts may well enough be found in irreconcilable 
opposition to each other. But this is the opposition of truth 
of fact to error in matter-of-fact, or of one error in matter-of- 
fact to another, rather than an antinomy properly so-called. 
Science encounters innumerable such contradictions, as does 
also our ordinary practical knowledge ; and the smooth prog- 
ress of knowledge is much embarrassed, while its solid and 
matured growth is fostered, by them. Conceptions, too, when 
framed by different minds upon the basis of fundamentally 
similar and yet, after all, exceedingly various facts of experi- 
ence, may contain opposed or contradictory elements. So 
that not only may men, without conscious lying or error, 
affirm, the one, " It was so," or, " So he did," and the other, 



ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 405 

" It was not so," or, " So he did not," but they may also 
express their most deliberate judgments as to the consti- 
tution and behavior of familiar things in quite squarely 
contradictory terms. Nor does the recent rapid progress 
of the physical and psychological sciences seem to diminish, 
but rather to multiply and to intensify these opposed concep- 
tions. The highest and most comprehensive conceptions, 
the most general and demonstratively assured laws, of these 
sciences are all capable of being filled with apparent contra- 
dictions, if only the limits of their accuracy in application 
and the tentative and fluid nature of their constitution be 
disregarded. Indeed, if one choose to look at the matter 
thus, — and this is a permissible and even fruitful manner 
of regarding it, — all growth of knowledge depends upon the 
principle of contradiction being active in a very comprehen- 
sive and lively way. I do not conceive of anything now in 
such manner as to escape all contradiction of my conceptions 
of twenty or thirty years ago. " When I was a child, I spake 
as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child ; but 
when I became a man, I put away childish things." Of every 
individual and of the race it must now and always, we doubt 
not, be said : " For we know in part, and we prophesy in 
part." Not once for all, but always and continuously, is the 
hope of the individual and of the race : " When that which is 
perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be " — con- 
tradicted partially, and largely transcended, and so — "done 
away." 

In some sort, all specific orderly arrangements of the 
results of the observation of facts are liable, and even cer- 
tain, to be contradicted by similar arrangements of other 
facts, or even of the same facts looked upon from other points 
of view. No law (or nomos) gets realization in the world 
of experience without limitation, opposition, and contradic- 
tion from other laws (or nomoi). Laws, when set into actual 
operation by the behavior of real beings, inevitably reveal 



406 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 

their inherent oppositions (are anti-nomoi). For real beings 
do not actually divide their qualities according to the terms 
in which we describe them ; nor are their transactions actually 
separable according to the forces and laws which we speak 
of as " seated in " or " ruling over " them. Why, for example, 
does not the projecting part of the coping stone fall, in obedi- 
ence to the law of gravitation, from the top of yonder building ? 
Because, as physics declares, the forces of cohesion, acting 
under quite different laws, thwart and oppose, for the time 
being, the law of gravitation. In the reality itself, the law 
of gravitation and the laws of cohesion exist as antinomies 
(nomoi that are anti-nomoi}. But now, after a frosty night, 
the coping stone actually breaks off and tumbles to the 
ground ; for that unique law which makes water expand 
forcibly at 82° Fahr. has contradicted the laws of cohesion 
and has restored to the law of gravitation its temporarily 
suspended rights over this mass of matter. 

As science rises in its observations and generalizations from 
the relatively simple and more massive forms of the being 
and behavior of real things to the more complex and molecular 
or atomic, it is obliged to posit a great variety of new forces 
which act against the unrestricted reign of those laws that 
suffice to express what belongs to the simpler and more 
massive forms. The picture which the chemico-physical view 
of the world presents to us is an indefinite exemplification of 
the antinomic action of various forces so-called. Indeed, the 
specific qualifications of those elementary physical beings, the 
atoms out of which chemical science gets the orderly con- 
struction of actuality, consist — to the extent of fully one half 
their entire content — in just this : they can, in accordance 
with laws of their own, contradict each other in their common 
strife after fitting partners with which to make a temporary 
combination. But molecules and atoms are all constantly 
united in contradicting the more primary. laws of physics. 
Chemical laws and physical laws, in actuality, are antinomies. 



ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 407 

The pitiful failure of the modern effort to make out of biology 
a purely chemi co-physical science affords numberless other 
illustrations of the same truth. And the effort to establish 
a theory of mental life in terms of the combination and 
differentiation of sensations and ideas is, even now, giving 
tokens of a yet more pitiful failure. Whenever I do anything 
with a conscious motive in view, I put myself in opposition 
to the uninterrupted action of the merely chemi co-physical 
and the psycho-physical mechanism. 

He, however, who denies the possibility of knowledge, or 
the possibility of the existence of a unitary system of things, 
because human knowledge of things is an unceasing recogni- 
tion of the immanence of many conflicting forces acting under 
laws of opposition and resistance (laws, that is, which when 
brought face to face seem to be antinomies), reasons falsely 
and goes quite wide of the true state of the case. For it is 
just in the recognition of the facts of opposition and of the 
modes of the actual behavior of things under conflicting laws 
that quite one half of all our knowledge consists. Moreover, 
it is only while maintaining their own specific being, and 
refusing to. be identified throughout with one another, that 
these many Things make up the Unity of the World. 

If now any one is offended because this fair and orderly 
cosmos has just been accused of being full of antinomies, he 
may perhaps be appeased by thinking out more clearly what 
is meant by " laws," and in what sense laws can be " opposed " 
to one another ; in what sense, that is, " antinomies " can exist 
for critical discovery and recognition. At present it is suffi- 
cient merely to note that the word " law " simply means a 
more or less uniform mode of the behavior of things, as looked 
at from one chosen point of view. But, in reality, no thing is 
so mean or so restricted in its equipment of capacity for doing 
and for suffering that it can ever be satisfactorily considered 
from one point of view simply. Every Thing — according to 
the very terms of the hypothesis — i$ one thing ; and what 



408 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 

it is now doing is one specific transaction under definite terms 
of relation to many different things. Bat the real being of 
each thing is infinitely complex ; and its actual doing may be 
considered under an indefinite number of relations, from an 
indefinite number of points of view. What falls into con- 
tradiction is our abstractions ; and this they always do if we 
inconsiderately plump them down as though they were the 
sole measures of the real, even as it is known to us. The 
fact that antinomies thus emerge does not discredit human 
knowledge ; the rather is it proof of the richness and variety 
of human knowledge. Nor does it show that there can be no 
reality answering in any way to our system of cognitions ; 
the rather does it show the infinite richness and variety of 
content belonging to Reality, as not simply answering to, but 
far surpassing the terms under which it is known by man. 
The further exposition of this subject, too, must be left to 
the details of a critical metaphysics. 

When, however, the question is raised whether antinomies 
exist in all knowledge, and so in all reality as known to us, the 
answer must assume a different form. Yet the form appro- 
priate to this answer has already been suggested. When- 
ever antinomies of this sort and extent in their applicability 
are propounded as a result of the criticism of cognitive 
faculty, the exercise of this faculty by the critic himself must 
be subjected to a careful revisionary criticism. For it may 
turn out that the alarming noise is merely the result of the 
petrified abstractions of the critic which are meeting in mid- 
air and exploding each other ; and this surely may take place 
without great actual damage either to human knowledge or to 
the world of the extra-mentally existent which is given in this 
knowledge. One may then return more calmly to the belief 
that truth is to be had by right exercise of human cog- 
nitive faculty. One may even get increase of conviction that 
no truth has anything to fear from other truths ; while illusion 
and error — no less in the higher regions of philosophical 



ALLEGED » ANTINOMIES " 409 

criticism than in the denser air of ordinary sense-perceptions 
— have every truth to fear. Then, too, Truth may come to 
mean again what it always has meant to minds undisturbed 
by epistemological scepticism or agnosticism, — namely, men- 
tal representation which affords a valid cognition of the being 
and transactions of Reality. Such re visionary criticism of 
the antinomic conclusions of a previous sceptical criticism 
we shall now briefly attempt — as was promised above — in 
the two following cases. 

The claim made by Kant that the purpose of his critical 
examination of man's cognitive faculty was the removal of 
knowledge (rather the illusory pretence of knowledge) in 
order to " make room " for faith (in God, Freedom, and Im- 
mortality) has not, of late, been sufficiently credited. The 
sincerity of this claim is, however, beyond reasonable ques- 
tion. It is proved by his own declaration, by the many indi- 
cations in the " Critique of Pure Reason " which look forward 
to the " Critique of Practical Reason," and in the latter work, 
which look backward upon the earlier work, and also by the 
very bulk and chosen method of the " Transcendental Dialec- 
tic." The "Transcendental Logic" is, indeed, that part of the 
" Critique of Pure Reason " which has excited interest and 
promoted hermeneutical discussion, far out of proportion to its 
size. But the relatively condensed form in which Kant left 
it, and the changes which he made in the second edition for 
the avowed purpose of increased clearness and of defending 
its doctrine against the charge of sceptical idealism, indicate 
that Kant himself regarded this part of his "Transcendental 
Logic " as only subsidiary to his main critical intent. This 
intent was chiefly, then, to establish beyond controversy the 
doctrine " of a logic of illusion " (eine Logik des Scheins). It 
is in this doctrine that the resolve of its author to " make 
room " for faith comes to a culmination with the sceptical 
conclusion : All cognition of noumena is, by the very consti- 
tution of the mind, forever rendered impossible. Here the 



410 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 

critical examination of those processes by which the mind 
thinks to gain a knowledge of Reality shows that these pro- 
cesses are, in their essential nature, deceptive. The " dialectic 
of pure reason " is declared to be " natural and inevitable ; " 
its illusion is " inherent in, and inseparable from, human 
reason ; " and " even after the illusion has been exposed," it 
will " never cease to fascinate our reason." But such dialectic 
is an illusion, utterly and forever incapable of telling us any 
truth about the real Self, or the actual World of things. 
The reality we know is but an appearance of reality (phe- 
nomenal reality) ; the actual reality — if so uncouth a phrase 
may be pardoned — is unknown and unknowable, whether 
our minds strive toward a satisfactory knowledge of Self or 
of Things. 

It is not our purpose here to discuss thoroughly the general 
positions of the " Transcendental Dialectic." Indeed, the 
most important of them have already been considered, either 
with or without direct reference to Kant. But whatever view 
may be held as to the other significant aspects of the episte- 
mological problem, the success of the critical effort to estab- 
lish antinomies, in the Kantian sense, would have the effect 
which their original proposer intended that it should have ; it 
would destroy forever the possibility of knowledge in the 
sense which we have found ourselves compelled to give to 
that term. According to Kant the reason of all men is 
afflicted with a constitutional and incurable tendency to start 
from something which is known, and by false syllogistic pro- 
cesses conclude " to something else of which no conception ever 
can be had, but to which, under constraint from an inevitable 
illusion, there is, nevertheless, attributed objective validity." 
Thus do all cheat themselves who suppose that they know the 
truth about the real nature of their own souls, of the world 
of things, and of " a Being of all beings," whom faith calls 
God. All these phrases stand not for concepts based, in a 
valid way, upon a real cognitive experience ; " they are 



ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 411 

sophistications, not of (individual) men, but of pure reason 
itself, from which even the wisest of men cannot escape." 
Kant's main object is to show that they are indeed sophistica- 
tions ; and that the syllogisms by which these conceptions 
are reached, form a species of juggling rather than a trust- 
worthy activity of reason (eher vernunftelnde ah Vernunft- 
schlusse zu nennen). Both reasoning and conceptions, as estab- 
lished by the reasoning, are involved in hopeless internal 
contradictions. 

For our present purpose it is not necessary to distinguish 
between the epistemological and logical standing of the 
"paralogisms" and that of the "antinomies " of pure reason. 
Both are given as instances under the agnostic conclusion of 
Kant's sceptical examination of human cognitive faculty. 
The knowledge which the soul has of its own real being, or 
rather fancies itself to have, is reduced to an " inevitable 
illusion " of reason " which drives us to a formally false con- 
clusion ; " because we are continually substituting a concep- 
tion of the soul derived from the mere form of thinking, 
under which it appears to itself, for its nature as really exist- 
ent. Thus the application to the soul of the categories of 
substantiality, unity, and relation to things, is a work of illu- 
sion. But the contradictions which Kant finds inherent in 
these so-called paralogisms are all put there by him ; they are 
the products of his own tendency to substitute formal and 
seductive abstractions for concrete and content-full realities. 
Such substantiality, unity, and relationship to possible objects 
in space, as he declares that reason attributes inevitably to the 
soul, may well enough for the most part be denied. But the 
real illusion, on the part of both Kant and of the theologians 
whom he controverts, consisted in attributing their arguments 
to a necessity of reason. It is not, therefore, a criticism of 
all reason which is needed, with a view to detect its in- 
destructible, illusory dialectic ; it is only a criticism of cer- 
tain awkward and self -contradictory conceptions, as applied 



412 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 

to the soul, which shall result in substituting for these concep- 
tions others that are formed upon the basis of our actual 
cognitive experience. 

The alleged contradictions of reason to which Kant him- 
self gave the name of " antinomies " have been so often sub- 
jected to criticism and their fallacies pointed out, that it 
would be threshing straw already many times under the flail 
to criticise them in detail over again. Let it not be forgotten, 
however, what precisely is the conclusion which Kant wished 
to prove from them. Not only must both Thesis and Anti- 
thesis of each antinomy appear plausible and even true, but 
both must spring up ever afresh and alike inevitable and con- 
vincing, so often as the attempt is made to square our cogni- 
tions with the reality of Things. For what the proof pledges 
itself to accomplish is precisely this : Thesis is irresistibly 
concluded by a constitutionally fixed ratiocinative process 
embedded in the very faculty of cognition ; antithesis is con- 
cluded in the same way ; thesis and antithesis are evenly- 
matched contradictories ; therefore — reason is honeycombed 
with antinomies, and knowledge of Reality is impossible. 
Now, in no one of the four Kantian antinomies can either one 
of these pledges be made good. In two cases both thesis and 
antithesis are only probable at best, but with varying degrees 
of probability ; in two cases the thesis and the antithesis are 
not fairly opposed ; in no case can both be said to be proved 
as inevitable illusory conclusions of reason ; in no case, there- 
fore, is the doctrine of antinomies established in a form to 
justify the accusation of a transcendental illusion inherent in 
all human knowledge of the world of real things. Indeed, 
the admissions of Kant himself with regard to the third and 
fourth examples virtually abolish their character as contra- 
dictions of a rational kind. 

In the case of the first antinomy, if by " World " (Die Welt) 
be meant the stellar universe as at present known to us, the 
thesis is much more probable than the antithesis; but for 



ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 413 

neither is there any a 'priori proof. Properly speaking, pure 
reason tells us nothing upon this problem sufficient to demon- 
strate QBeweis) either thesis or antithesis. But our growing 
knowledge of the system of things seems more and more 
clearly to indicate that " the World," as known, is now in such 
condition as to imply that its extent is limited, and that it began 
to be, although an indefinitely long time ago. Against this 
conclusion, our ignorance of how the world began to be is no 
" proof " ; neither is our inability to conceive of past time in 
which the World was not (eine here Zeit) a ground of legiti- 
mate inference. Indeed, this very inability is something 
that Kant himself seems to call in question, when, in the 
" Transcendental ^Esthetic," he declares that " we can well 
take away phenomena out of time." Oar inability to repre- 
sent things as existent out of space and time, instead of being 
the source of an illusion, is the result of the fact that our 
positive cognitions of things are in space and time. What it 
is really to be in space and time, and how a world of things 
can be conceived of as beginning to be in space and time, are 
questions of speculative metaphysics, the answer to which 
must be made to depend upon concrete and valid cognitions 
of things, if answer is to be given at all. Nor, if it should 
be found that agnosticism is the only attitude toward these 
questions, does it follow that reason is full of antinomies, 
and that the knowledge of things, in any respect as they really 
are, is impossible. 

The second example of the " antinomy of pure reason " is 
so far-fetched and inconclusive that it seems as though Kant 
must have invented it purely in the interests of a spurious 
architectonic symmetry. Its obvious fallacies are its author's 
own ; they cannot be fathered upon the productive energy of 
" reason in general." The conflict is one which results from 
confusing our perceptions and corresponding mental represen- 
tations of concrete experiences about things with abstract 
and purely mathematical concepts of the formal conditions of 



414 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 

space relations — abstractions treated as though they were 
realities. " The entire antinomy," we agree with Adickes in 
saying, " has originated solely out of a confusion of concepts." 
Space, abstractly considered, may be theoretically treated as 
though it were indefinitely divisible ; indeed, it must be so 
treated. When space is treated in this way, our sums in 
the pure mathematics of space "prove" themselves in accord- 
ance with the principles of such proof. But that things are 
not infinitely divisible is the present conclusion of those 
chemico-physical sciences which are based upon observation 
of the actual modes of the behavior of things. 

The thesis and the antithesis of the third example of an 
" antinomy of pure reason " are so full of faulty conceptions 
and inconsequent argument as to require a detailed treatment 
of the doctrine of causation in order properly to criticise 
them. It is well known to students of Kant that his own 
conception of causation was ambiguous and changeable. As 
a mode of the functioning of pure understanding the concep- 
tion gets (as has already been pointed out) a wholly unsat- 
isfactory treatment in the table of the categories. But 
" other " causation than that which is here denominated 
" according to the laws of nature " is assumed as the source 
of " that which is given " in Kant's own account of the origin 
and nature of sensuous experience ; while his theory of the 
nature and grounds of the life of conduct, and of the teleo- 
logical interpretation of the world, finds itself obliged freely 
to postulate such other causation. 

There is little doubt, however, that discussions of the so- 
called " self-determining power " of the Self (eine Kausalitdt 
durch Freihei£) are particularly fruitful of apparent antino- 
mies. Here theology discovers its irreconcilable contradic- 
tion between the divine foreknowledge and predestination, 
on the one hand, and the imputability and spontaneity of 
human personality, on the other hand. No small part of the 
most persistent difficulties which philosophy finds in its en- 



ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 415 

deavor so to construct its conception of the " Absolute," the 
"Ultimate Reality" (or whatever other term it may choose 
for its final attempt at synthesis) as not to impair the legiti- 
mate grounds of ethics, first appears in connection with its 
analysis of the causal principle. Indeed, the experience of 
every individual man, as well as the experience of the race, 
involves both sides of this so-called antinomy. The tragedy of 
life, its conflicts, defeats, and victories, is fraught with the 
same experience. The outcry of humanity is this : " I find 
then a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with 
me ; " and — "I see another law in my members, warring 
against the law of my mind." This is the great antinomy, 
or conflict of laws (the nomoi that run anti), under which the 
moral development of the individual and of the race takes 
place. And according as the Self, aroused and enlightened, 
throws the weight of its choice, and of the influence resulting 
from choice, upon the side of one law or the other, the issue of 
the antinomy is actually decided. On the one side is a law, 
or a system of laws, that binds the Self within the confines of 
what we call Xature, — working blindly and in fixed mechani- 
cal fashion along a seemingly endless chain of causes. On 
the other side is another law which, with an equal absolute- 
ness of imperative, sets before the Self a course of conduct, 
to follow which demands breaking over the limitations of the 
former law, in the effort to realize its own destiny through 
conscious fidelity to an ideal. Between the two laws, as it 
were, and under perpetual limitations from them both, stands 
the Self and exercises its choice. Thus it becomes, from the 
ethical point of view, either more and more enslaved by the 
one law, or more and more free by habitually choosing to 
follow the other law. This is, indeed, a picture of actual 
experience ; perhaps no one else has more forcefully pre- 
sented it than has Kant himself. It is undoubtedly, by its 
very nature, a description of a conflict — and, even, in some 
sort, of a contradiction — of ruling principles which forces us 



416 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 

to the agnostic position in respect of its satisfactory under- 
standing, but which is practically solved by all men in the 
courses of conduct which they pursue. 

But this is not, as Kant claims, an Antinomy of Pure Kea- 
son, an irreconcilable contradiction of thesis and antithesis, 
which spring alike out of the very nature of cognitive faculty, 
and yet are both equally invincible in their appeal to " proof.'' 
The appearance of this sort of an antinomy is removed, when 
the origin, nature, and legitimate applications of the concep- 
tion of causation are correctly understood. It is thus shown 
that our conceptions of " causality, according to the laws 
of nature," and of " another causality, that of freedom," both 
originate in one and the same experience of the reflective 
Self. 1 Both are true, in so far as they are formed in recog- 
nition of the fundamental facts of that cognitive experience 
in which they originate. They become apparent contradic- 
tions, inherent in the very life of reason itself, only when one 
(or both) of the two conceptions has been framed in disre- 
gard of our total experience, has been hypostasized, and 
then illegitimately extended for the explanation of what re- 
quires them both to be kept in mind. Here, too, as every- 
where else, explanation is limited by the inexplicable ; the 
analysis of cognition leads to inquiries before which the ag- 
nostic attitude is alone reasonable. 

In the fourth example of "the antinomy of pure reason" 
both thesis and antithesis are products of such complicated and 
doubtful speculative efforts that, in the form in which Kant 
here states and " proves " them, they can no more be charged 
to the account of human cognitive faculty in general than can 
the a 'priori system of physics which, in the Transcendental 
Logic, he also takes for granted as rationally necessary truth. 
How much confidence in the Absolute it is necessary to attrib- 
ute to reason, and to make use of in the very structure of 

1 See Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, chapters xxi. and xxvi., 
and Philosophy of Mind, chapters vii. and viii. 



ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 417 

knowledge itself, will be briefly considered later on. Indeed, 
from this point on the entire " Critique of Pure Reason " be- 
comes, more than before, a series of doubtful speculative pro- 
positions of a negative and sceptical kind, set over against 
other speculative propositions, rather than a genuine criticism 
of human cognitive faculty. 

The recent work of Mr. Bradley follows the method of 
Kant in one important respect. It is an acute and deter- 
mined attempt to set forth the inherent contradictions that 
afflict our mental processes in their claim to form true, as 
distinguished from merely logical, judgments. Unlike Kant, 
however, Mr. Bradley does not avowedly aim to " remove 
knowledge " in order u to make room " for faith — in God, 
Freedom, and Immortality. The rather does he strive to 
destroy confidence in all human cognition of things as they 
" appear " to us, in order to make room for a theoretical and 
speculative construction of Reality, of a highly scholastic 
sort. Under the title of " Appearance," the whole world of 
minds and things, as actually known to man, is discovered 
to be a collection of irreconcilable contradictories. The solu- 
tion of these contradictions is to be found in a certain con- 
ception of Reality. This conception is supposed to be framed, 
not on a basis of confidence in the truth of experience, — 
whether cognitive or practical, whether of knowledge or of 
faith and conduct, — but in the speculator's power to absorb 
the contradictions into the structure of an abstraction. " Ap- 
pearance " is made a term to cover all the realities of which, 
or about which, we have knowledge ; but appearance is denied 
reality because it is, eo ipso, self-contradictory. " Reality " 
is then speculatively constructed, with the utmost disregard 
of all our actual cognitions, either of or about any known 
realities. It seems then that, while Mr. Bradley in his de- 
structive effort agrees with Kant, in his constructive result 
he only sets up one of those very products of speculation as to 
" Reality," which Kant deemed mere negative and problemat- 

27 



418 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 

ical concepts and intended to render forever " hors du com- 
bat " for all truly critical minds. 

Again, a protest is entered against this entire way of con- 
ducting mixed epistemological and metaphysical discussions. 
If the work of criticism ends by dismissing man's cognitive 
faculty from the front door, by reason of a complete loss of 
confidence that it can give us the truth of Reality, no valid 
idea corresponding to this term can be surreptitiously intro- 
duced by the back door, either in the name of faith or of 
philosophic speculation. If knowledge is not for all men 
something other than an " appearance," then all academic ab- 
stractions are forever prejudged ; they present an absolutely 
worthless claim when they mark themselves with the label of 
" Reality." If the common categories, in that fundamental 
use of them which every cognitive judgment illustrates and 
enforces, are in no wise valid for the really existent world, 
then all the criticisms of scholastic epistemology and the 
speculations of scholastic metaphysics are no better, " truth- 
wise," than a madman's dream. 

But, as has already been declared, we do not admit the ex- 
istence of antinomies, or contradictions either of fact or of 
law, so inherent in the very life of cognitive faculty as to 
destroy its power to present us with a trustworthy picture of 
Reality. So far as alleged antinomies are actual, they belong 
to the very nature of human knowledge as positive and worthy 
of confidence ; they enlarge the true picture of the nature of 
the actual World. But, for the most part, they are only 
alleged and spurious ; they are due to the faulty abstractions 
of the critic ; and this seems to us to be eminently true of 
Mr. Bradley's doctrine of antinomies. 

The most convenient example, perhaps, to select for testing 
Mr. Bradley's agnosticism with reference to the ontological 
applicability of the categories is that afforded by his chapter 1 
on " Relation and Quality." The antinomy which he here 

1 Appearance and Reality, chapter iii. 



ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 419 

wishes to establish is stated by him as follows: "Relation 
presupposes quality, and quality relation. Each can be some- 
thing neither together with, nor apart from, the other." 
While, then, they are the necessary forms of all our knowledge 
of " appearance," — a term which covers, in the author's use 
of it, the entire field of all concrete realities, both Self and 
Things, as we seem to know them in their actual relations, 
— " the vicious circle in which they turn is not the truth about 
reality." If we may throw this inherent contradiction into 
somewhat more definitely antinomic form than Mr. Bradley 
himself has given it, we may put the sad case of our cognitive 
faculty thus : — Thesis : qualities are unintelligible, are nothing, 
without relations ; antithesis : qualities, taken together with re- 
lations, are equally unintelligible and incapable of giving the 
truth of reality. Therefore, our cognitive faculty, which, con- 
fessedly, must know the Self and all things as having qualities 
and standing in relations, is shown to be afflicted with such 
inherent and irremovable contradictions that it can give no 
"truth about reality." Thus is accomplished the object of this 
chapter, as of every other chapter in the first Part of the entire 
work (Book I. Appearance), — namely, "to show that the 
very essence of these ideas is infected and contradicts itself." 
Now we unhesitatingly contend that the thesis of this an- 
tinomy, when its language is rendered intelligible by being 
adapted to express the facts of our actual cognitions, is neither 
metaphysically unintelligible nor infected and self-contradic- 
tory in respect of the essence of its ideas. But the antithesis 
is unintelligible, either because its terms must be left as 
barren abstractions that have no ground of standing in our 
actual experiences, or else because they are made to be in- 
fected and self-contradictory by having a meaning put into 
them which they need not bear. Both thesis and antithesis 
are faultily expressed. For while the naive and common- 
sense meaning of their terms has been transcended, the 
meaning which those same terms come to have to a con- 



420 ALLEGED " ANTINOMIES " 

sistently critical epistemology and metaphysics has been 
either obscured altogether or expressed unhappily. " To find 
qualities without relations is surely impossible," says Mr. 
Bradley ; and to the truth of this proposition one may assent, 
while demurring at the abstract form, with its implication 
that qualities and relations might be conceived of either as 
themselves realities, or as some sort of appendages or super- 
ficial qualifications of reality as it appears to us. 

By the term " Quality," as applied to things, men always 
mean to designate certain facts of cognitive experience which 
require, and admit of, further analysis. The qualities of 
things are those immediately known or inferred modes of 
their behavior, both active and passive, by which we classify 
them (sort them out according to the ways in which they 
answer the question, Qualis?), recognize them when we 
meet them again, and so adapt our conduct with respect to 
them. This conception of qualities — not as themselves ex- 
isting, either " together with " or " apart from " relations, but 
as the modes of the being and doing of realities — is a com- 
plex conception. It summarizes, in fact, a number of the 
so-called categories. To argue about it as though it were some 
simplex, stuck to the thing or inherent permanently in it as in a 
core of abstract reality devoid of qualifications, is true neither 
to popular impressions nor to critical metaphysics. When 
we have analyzed the conception of quality, we do find that 
it, like all those conceptions which enfold the concrete facts 
and ultimate laws of knowledge, involves much that is mysteri- 
ous, — much before which, unless we can rise to the higher 
and more ideal points of view, we have to maintain the agnos- 
tic attitude. But this is a very different thing from accusing 
this idea of being, in its "very essence," infected and self- 
contradictory. 

The complex conception of concrete things as variously 
qualified involves the category of " Relation." But this 
category does not admit of further analysis. The idea of 



ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 421 

" relation in general " is but an abstraction derived from a 
cognitive experience which always gives us reality as actually 
related in some concrete and definite way. On the epistemo- 
logical side, then, we only recognize the very nature of the 
thought-process, as it enters into all knowledge, by saying that 
"to know is to relate." On the ontological side, we only 
describe the most fundamental and positive characterization 
of all known beings, when we affirm that they are all, in as 
far as known or conceivable, actually related. To deny either 
of these truths is theoretically to render that commerce 
between the cognitive subject and the cognized object, in 
which knowledge itself consists, quite impossible. The fullest 
and most ultimate experience in which our consciousness of 
these truths originates has already been sufficiently described. 
If by calling the description, or any of the ideas involved in 
it, " unintelligible " Mr. Bradley means that nothing more 
simple and ultimate than that which is stated in terms of 
these ideas can be said about knowledge and reality, this is 
true. But this is quite a different charge to bring against 
the activities, forms, and content of human cognition, from 
that of being, in their very essence, " infected " and " self- 
contradictory." 

That " qualities are nothing without relations " is, then, 
true as tested by the nature of our actual concrete cognitions 
of things. But when Mr. Bradley undertakes the proof of the 
antithesis, that " qualities taken together with relations are 
equally unintelligible," he begins to labor heavily. In fact, 
his entire so-called argument seems here to go quite wide of 
its aim. That "nothings cannot be related, and that to turn 
qualities in relation into mere relations is impossible," no one 
need hesitate to admit. But what the critic himself makes a 
show of doing, is to turn the mere abstract idea of relation in 
general into an entity, in order to set up some kind of a 
deadly quarrel between it and the equally abstract and more 
unjustifiable hypostasis of the conception of quality. Indeed, 



422 ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 

is not this the " vice in procedure " which clings to all the 
so-called antinomies ? The actual forms of the most indubit- 
able cognition of all realities are treated as though they were 
themselves realities ; and they are then set into a position of 
contradiction which arises from the attempt to find in some 
one or more of them, separately, a complete account of all the 
forms in which the concrete realities reveal themselves to the 
mind. Surely this procedure ought not to be so easily pos- 
sible after Kant's treatment of " the Amphiboly of Reflective 
Concepts " and of the unsatisfactoriness of all merely con- 
ceptual views of the World. 1 

The outcome of the discussion of this chapter has a certain 
quasi-ethical significance, to which fuller consideration will 
be given in other connections. For human reason, even in — 
and especially in — its work of self-criticism, must recognize 
its own inherent responsibilities and its undiminished regard 
for teleological considerations. To the critical use of reason, 
in some sort, applies the rule which it is so ready to call to 
mind, in the case of less important individual differences : 
Falsus in uno,falsus in omnibus. This must not, however, be 
held in such way as to deny that error may mingle with truth; 
much less to affirm that truth is not to be attained at all if 
any risk or taint of error seem to threaten all human inquiries 
after truth. But if the entire cognitive faculty of man is, by 

1 With Mr. Bradley's aims, and with many of his most important positive 
conclusions, we find ourselves not only in full sympathy hut in large measure of 
agreement. But no ontological conclusions whatever, whether largely agreeing 
with, or wholly dissenting from, those at which the author arrives in his second 
Book (on "Reality "), can possibly be trusted, after the sceptical and agnostic 
outcome of his first Book (on " Appearance ") has been accepted. When 
once the constitutional forms of human cognition have been shown to be ideas 
that have mere seeming, and that are in " their very essence " " infected " and 
"self-contradictory," there remains nothing further to be done in the way of 
establishing a rational ontology. Any ontology thus constructed is prejudged ; 
it is already twice plucked up by the roots, dead and withered, before it can put 
in the " appearance " even of a truly rational life. And if the critic does such 
things in the case of the green tree of his own metaphysics, what will not the 
next critic do in the case of that same tree when it has already become dry 1 



ALLEGED "ANTINOMIES" 423 

its constitution, compelled to think and to accept the truth of 
squarely contradictory principles, or to frame ideas which 
implicate correlated forms of the being and behavior of the 
really existent World, so that they shall " in their very 
essence " be " infected " and " self-contradictory," it is some- 
thing worse than intellectual vanity to elaborate systems of 
metaphysics. Nor do we believe that faith will ever come to 
occupy the room made vacant by the removal of knowledge in 
this way. For experience is some sort of a unity ; and unless 
what appears to man as reality can somehow be known as 
" true reality " (Mr. Bradley's strange phrase) we, as critics 
of the cognitive faculty, are " of all men most miserable." 



CHAPTER XV 

TRUTH AND ERROR 

TT may seem to some readers that the trustworthiness of 
-L our cognitive judgments, the value for the transcendent 
of our experience, and the validity in general of human 
knowledge, have been over-emphasized. The preliminary 
survey of the nature of knowledge showed that its problem is 
proposed to philosophy in the form of a question: How can 
cognition, which is, psychologically considered, a subjec- 
tive affair, a mere process in consciousness, be also trans- 
subjective or ontologically referent, so as to put the mind 
in possession of truth respecting Reality ? From a sceptical 
beginning, and following carefully the critical method, posi- 
tive and comprehensive conclusions have been reached. 
In all cognition, the reality of the Self — that it is, and 
what it is — is immediately and indubitably given; and the 
reality of Things is also given, — that they are, immediately 
and indubitably, and what they are, if we accept in good 
faith the postulate of their being and behaving after the 
analogy of the self-known Self. To doubt thus much is 
theoretically to deny the possibility of knowledge. When 
subjected to critical analysis the very denial is found to be 
inherently contradictory and absurd. All knowledge is, in- 
deed, on the one hand, limited by barriers of accepted and 
experienced fact, and, on the other hand, by the necessity 
of responding with an agnostic answer to many question- 
ings after reasons and causes. He, however, who, because 
he must often say, "I do not know," refuses to accept and 



TRUTH AND ERROR 425 

live by the positive truths implicated in the affirmation, 
"I do know," will never attain to intellectual peace. He 
may even commit the unpardonable sin against the spirit 
of truth. 

Moreover, the nature and growth of human knowledge is 
such that truth, as contrasted with error, must always be 
the fundamentally positive and more inclusive thing in 
human experience. Critics of our common faculty of cogni- 
tion are quite too much accustomed to pessimistic conclu- 
sions. To take Schopenhauer's estimate of the negative 
results of Kant's criticism for an example : "Kant discovered 
the subjectively conditioned and therefore entirely immanent 
nature of knowledge, that is, its unsuitableness for trans- 
cendental use, from the constitution of knowledge itself; 
and therefore he very appropriately called his doctrine the 
4 Critique of Reason. ' " 1 Now, to translate this statement 
into the terms which our analysis has shown to be descrip- 
tive of the exact facts of the case, it amounts to saying : The 
only trustworthy outcome to a thorough examination of 
human cognitive faculty is the discovery that, although its 
trans-subjective reference and " transcendental use " is im- 
manent in its very constitution, we are somehow forced to 
call this aspect of it an illusion or a lie. But the very 
terms "subjectively conditioned," "immanent nature," 
"transcendental use," "constitution of nature," etc., are 
either pregnant with conclusions that contradict the scepti- 
cal outcome of the Kantian Critique, or else they are them- 
selves utterly empty and meaningless. Ultimately, even the 
words "illusion" and "lie" are found to derive all their 
meaning from conceptions of truth and reality which remain 
unimpaired by the sceptical process. And the fundamental 
illusion of the critic himself may be said to consist in the 
impression that he can thus give the lie to the common con- 
sciousness, with its undying, warm conviction, of the truth 

l The World as Will and Idea, iii., p. 27. 



426 TRUTH AND ERROR 

of Self and of Things, and yet save the results of his own 
criticism. This is indeed the Trpcorov tyevSos of epistemo- 
logical agnosticism. 

The amount of Truth in the present possession of the 
human mind may always be looked upon as small indeed 
compared with the conceivable extent of truth. What this 
means so far as concerns the truth that is in present posses- 
sion, has already been made sufficiently clear in treating of 
the nature, kinds, degrees, and limits of human knowledge. 
A becoming modesty will always characterize the genuine 
spirit of science and philosophy, in view of the smallness of 
the field of present attainment, as compared with the incom- 
mensurable magnitude of the still unknown. And since the 
growth of scientific and philosophical knowledge has always 
so largely consisted in the correction of mistakes of fact 
and errors of conception, there is more than sufficient reason 
to suspect that large admixtures of the untrue still remain 
with what now appears to be true. The compatibility of 
this experience with a positive confidence in present posses- 
sions of truth, and in the validity of the distinction between 
truth and error by reference of both to Reality, is a subject 
for epistemological inquiry. But we are now interested in 
inquiring whether the valid claims of scepticism and agnos- 
ticism have not, of late, been greatly overestimated. A 
generation ago Mr. Herbert Spencer 1 set out to establish an 
elaborate doctrine of nescience; but he began with the 
announcement of his conviction that there is "a soul of 
truth in things erroneous." Since then, this original con- 
viction appears to have been quite too much overlaid with 
the great mass of dogmatic agnosticism accumulated by both 
the master and his more or less confiding disciples. Even 
Mr. Spencer's more positive conclusions as to the possibil- 
ity of knowing the Ultimate Reality have suffered unwar- 
rantably in the same way. We, too, believe that there is 

1 First Principles, chapter i. 



TRUTH AND ERROR 427 

a " soul of truth in things erroneous. " Indeed, we believe 
that all errors " live and move and have their being, " only 
in and by the possession of this warm and active principle 
of truth. And as the soul of truth that was originally in 
things erroneous is recognized and developed into its due 
characteristic form and proportions, the husk of errors falls 
off and perishes. 

To state the same experience in another way : We actually 
find much more truth than error in all those judgments of 
men which seem to them to embody their most assured cog- 
nitions. He who would accept them all for true, rather 
than false, and would diligently seek so as finally to dis- 
cover the " soul of truth " in them, would thereby gain a 
much more satisfactory and valid picture of Reality, than 
would he who should content himself with the negative and 
agnostic results of epistemological criticism. To win truth, 
it is better to present a genial than a repulsive side toward 
the common opinions and beliefs of men. For truth is a 
mistress who does not like a sour and distrustful counte- 
nance, however resolute and masterful. Her chosen favorite 
is courteous as well as persistent; trustful toward his mis- 
tress, while not being, on due occasion, without jealousy for 
her honor. In every field of truth — practical, scientific, 
philosophical, religious — trust is more productive than dis- 
trust; and certain positive conclusions are usually more jus- 
tifiable and better worth the making than are any negative 
and agnostic conclusions. The great brain and the big 
heart of the multitude of men are the seats of true thoughts 
and of fitting emotions; they give birth to the important 
truths with reference to the being of man and to the all- 
embracing Reality, however frequently they go astray in some 
of their functions. Human science, no matter how doubtful 
about its facts, and faulty in its generalizations, is much 
more to be credited than discredited as regards the truth of 
its total message when that message is rightly understood. 



428 TRUTH AND ERROR 

Nor was there ever propounded a system of metaphysics so 
recondite, illogical, or fantastic, that it did not embrace 
more of fundamental truth than of falsehood. And that 
portion of human cognitive experience in which arise and 
grow, as in a fruitful soil, the mental and emotional atti- 
tudes of men toward God, Freedom, and Immortality can- 
not be torn out by violence or excised by the keen knife of 
sceptical criticism, without leaving in unrecognizable frag- 
ments the whole body of such experience. 

It is, then, in some respects a harder task for epistemo- 
logical doctrine to determine how error arises, to show its 
reality in experience, and to furnish the means for testing 
and detecting it, than to perform the same offices for truth. 
This task cannot, however, be shirked or set one side on 
account of its inherent difficulties ; nor, because truth is the 
more abiding and inclusive thing in human experience, can 
we assign to error only a negative meaning and a wholly 
subordinate significance. Not a few students of the episte- 
mological problem have chosen to regard all error as either 
partial truth, or else as the merely negative limit of truth 
on its way from lower to higher stages of expression and 
degrees of development. There are certain important con- 
siderations implied in giving this turn to our phrasing of 
an answer to the epistemological problem. Error is essen- 
tially not-truth ; but one can scarcely reverse this proposition 
and declare that truth is essentially not-error. Moreover, 
as has already been implied, no erroneous proposition can 
be posited, and no false judgment can be framed, except with 
reference to some positive correct proposition as express- 
ing a true judgment. So that there is a. certain justification 
for the paradoxical statement : he who blunders most miser- 
ably is nearer the absolutely correct than the absolutely 
incorrect announcement of a real cognitive experience ; and 
he who lies most outrageously tells more of what is true 
than of what is false, in the very terms of his lying propo- 



TRUTH AND ERROR 429 

sition. Only Satan can be "a liar from the beginning;" 
and of the manner of his accomplishing this remarkable 
feat of escaping all truth, one can scarcely form a defensible 
conception. 

Still further, many — perhaps we should not go too far in 
declaring, that all — of the most important truths dawn 
upon the consciousness of the individual and of the race in 
the form of half-truths. In the history of scientific progress 
few things are more instructive than to notice how the most 
wonderful classes of new facts, and the strangest discoveries 
regarding the classification and formulation of these facts 
under laws which express the relations they sustain to the 
present system of scientific cognitions, have their anticipa- 
tory stages and fitful periods of obscure apprehension. 
Seldom, indeed, is the earlier recognition given to the 
truth at which science aims, other than very fragmentary 
and partial. Similarities and differences are not defini- 
tively marked out ; and even the most fixed terms of relation 
to the fundamental existences of nature are expressed in a 
faltering and changeable way. An interesting example of 
this progress in knowledge may be found in the history of 
bacteriology. 

Nor does the more "finished" form of science feel that 
it is capable of expressing the full and final significance 
of a single fact in human cognitive experience ; much less 
that any of its laws are the complete and unchangeable 
expression of the being and transactions of that part of our 
experience which we call "Nature" (whether regarded as 
naturans or naturata — to borrow a distinction of long stand- 
ing). Now, from this fractional character belonging to all 
the truth we know, or think we know, it seems to follow 
that the other fraction necessary to complete the totality of 
the apparent sphere of human knowledge, is entitled to be 
called error rather than unknown truth. This would appear 
to justify the epistemological conclusion that all our truth 



430 TRUTH AND ERROR 

is half-error (more or less). Such a conclusion might, in 
turn, be converted into the proposition that all error is 
partial truth; because it is solely due to negative limita- 
tions inherent in the very nature of truth itself. For, 
finally, how shall ignorance and error be distinguished, 
since men are perpetually bound to assume that they know 
what they are only entitled to believe or to opine, and since 
all the truth actually known is, after all, not more than 
fractionally true ? 

We have little taste for the dispute over " poles of opposi- 
tion," over "negatives " and "positives;" or for the debated 
question whether all truth can be reduced to a kind of illu- 
sion or error, and all error to a partial or limited truth. 
As in the more purely ethical realm, sin and wrong-doing 
are not mere negations or limitations of righteousness, so in 
the more purely intellectual realm does the case stand with 
error and truth. Error is not merely the negative of truth ; 
mistaken judgment is not always to be defined as simple 
failure to express correctly the whole of one's cognitive 
experience. Every cognitive judgment, from the epistemo- 
logical point of view, is just as positive when it negates as 
when it affirms ; and there may be, of course, quite as much 
error in denying what is true as in affirming what is false. 
Moreover, to affirm of " all " what is true only of " some " 
is an erroneous proposition, — a judgment not only logically 
faulty but also metaphysically false. But to fall short of 
affirming of " all, " because, although the universal truth of 
the proposition may be clear to other minds, the judgment 
has not yet become cognitive for our mind in this universal 
form, is to be " true " in the noblest sense of the word 
applicable to the functioning of a human intellect. 

On the one hand, the ethically wrong has respect to 
matters of conduct more purely. Judging, and propounding 
the results of judging, are indeed matters in which will 
takes part. Our analysis of the nature of cognition has 



TRUTH AND ERROR 431 

shown this to be true. Much human error, too, is mixed 
up with more or less of wrong-doing; and the relations 
between "conduct," in the ethical meaning of the word, and 
false and erroneous judgment are far from being loose or 
remote. Nor can these relations easily be confined to any 
particular kind of truth, so as to exclude from the observa- 
tions and experiments of physical science the moral defects 
of self-conceit, insincerity, and selfishness, while admitting 
that so-called religious faith or metaphysical speculation 
may easily be corrupted in this way so as to destroy the 
fractional "soul of truth in things erroneous. " On the 
other hand, the so-called laws under which the two kinds of 
action take place are not, by any means, precisely the same. 
Wrong-doing, as distinguished from going wrong in judg- 
ment, stands in quite a different relation to righteousness 
from that in which error, as distinguished from wilfully 
sophisticated or slovenly judgment, stands to truth. The 
intellectual conditions which determine that form of action 
we call the cognitive judgment are more strict and inflexi- 
ble than are those forms of conception under which moral 
conduct in general takes place. Here we discover the 
sphere in which differences in the kinds of truth become 
most important. 

The main principle of differentiation now to be recognized 
is the relation which the alleged truth sustains to the emo- 
tional and practical life of man. Every court of justice 
brings out the fact that errors of sense -perception are fre- 
quent in all matters of observation by the senses. The 
same thing every psychological laboratory also can easily 
demonstrate. What the court of justice shows more clearly 
than does the psychological laboratory is this : such errors 
are most frequent in the direction of interests of an emo- 
tional and practical sort. But every director of a physical 
or chemical laboratory knows how many mistaken induc- 
tions have in the past been built into the body of so-called 



432 TRUTH AND ERROR 

"science," and how difficult it is to exclude such inductions 
from the constant edification of that body. When " experts " 
meet to testify on different sides in the same court of justice 
we learn, in larger measure, one set of reasons why so-called 
scientific conclusions do not agree. Moreover, the attitude 
of cognition toward Reality is necessarily such that the 
cognitive judgment feels the fuller force of the inescapable 
and seemingly rigid character of concrete entities. Con- 
duct, although under such control from the really existent 
World of things that it cannot be determined in disregard 
of its being and behavior, is itself a much more flexible and 
fluid thing in its relation to that world. My pleasing and 
willing undoubtedly have much to do with my knowing 
at all ; and also with what I know, if I know at all. Yet 
men do not say that it pleases them, or that they will, 
to frame their cognitive judgments thus and so rather than 
otherwise; but they affirm that they conduct themselves, 
within much wider boundaries, as they please or as they 
will. 

The fuller explanation and significance of such considera- 
tions as the foregoing best become manifest, so far as 
epistemology requires, in connection with the theory of 
knowledge thus far adopted. Detailed discussion of the 
means for establishing truths and detecting errors, theory 
of method in general, and the technique of investigation 
and proof belonging to the particular sciences, offer many 
interesting problems into which we cannot enter. Our present 
aim is simply to show what meanings are properly attached 
to the terms by which men distinguish truth and error; 
how the distinction originates in accordance with principles 
determining the growth of knowledge ; and what are some of 
the more general criteria that may fitly be employed for 
making and defending the distinction. In a word, the 
epistemological problem under discussion is: How is the 
fact of knowledge consistent with the existence of both error 



TRUTH AND ERROR 433 

and truth ? Here, too, as in the discussion of every episte- 
mological problem, reference must be constantly had to 
Reality ; and thus the problem is not merely epistemological 
but is also ontological. For who shall arbitrate in the 
friendly game or bitter fight between so-called truth and 
so-called error ? It is only in the somewhat contemptible 
arena of the ancient sophist, or in the mildly inane " debat- 
ing society " of modern times that men appeal to rhetoric or 
to logic alone to adjudge the case disputed between them. 
In what is significantly called " real life " the issues at 
bottom, however their presence may be overlooked or con- 
cealed, have regard to something other than the judicious 
ordering of persuasive arguments or an apparently strict 
conformity to the rules of the syllogism. These issues 
submit only when Reality itself decides the appeal made to 
it. For the question at issue reads best as follows : What 
is true, and what is false ? — not, Who has stated his case 
most judiciously and convincingly ? Now, in fact, this very 
appeal embodies the entire theory of knowledge as it has 
already been stated and defended. Mere arguments submit 
to the arbitrament of the logician or the rhetorician. They 
ask for judgment framed by the mind that moves methodi- 
cally and smoothly from accepted premises to derived con- 
clusion. But alleged cognitions make an appeal to the 
being and transactions of the really existent world ; and they 
are often obliged to carry this appeal through lengthy and 
tortuous processes of ratiocination (as, for example, in the 
case of an inquiry like that concerning the " localization of 
cerebral function," or "the origin of the synoptic Gospels "). 
But "rough and ready," if only it will enable the mind to 
envisage and interpret what is actual, is a most acceptable 
motto for him who aspires to know the truth. 

It is obviously the correct doctrine of the cognitive judg- 
ment to which one must turn in order to discover the pro- 
founder meaning of the words "truth" and "error." It is 

28 



434 TRUTH AND ERROR 

admitted by all, even by those who take the merely logical 
or psychological points of view, that truth and error can be 
affirmed or denied of judgments alone. He who simply has 
sensations, ideas, feelings, conative impulses, as such, — 
whatever the characteristics of these psychical phenomena in 
themselves may be, — cannot be either commended for truth- 
fulness or condemned for falsehood. To a second being 
who affirms or denies the existence of these psychoses in the 
consciousness of the first being, the term "true " or "false" 
may be applied. For epistemology, however, it is important 
to go beyond this point: only alleged cognitive judgments 
can properly be called either true or false. Truth and error 
belong to the attempts of men at knowledge. We think 
correctly or incorrectly, if we may conceive of ourselves as 
merely thinking ; we act aptly or ineptly, whenever we can 
isolate action from the cognitive judgments which it so 
frequently expresses or applies ; and we feel appropriately or 
inappropriately, if we regard merely the affective aspect of 
consciousness in its relation to other subjective factors. 
But it is when we think, feel, and will, in such manner as 
to set the total Self into those relations toward Reality 
which the cognitive judgment embodies and expresses, that 
we become capable of apprehending truth or of committing 
error. He who affirms "I know, etc.," must either have 
truth on his side, or error against him ; and the testing of 
the affirmation is always made in the form of an appeal to 
that which men call "actual " or "matter-of-fact." 

By Truth, then, all men understand such a judgment, 
affirming cognition, as corresponds to the being and the 
transactions of the really Existent. By error they under- 
stand such a judgment as lacks this correspondence. And 
since any alleged cognitive judgment may partially corre- 
spond and partially fail to correspond, they recognize that 
"fractional validity" of many cognitive judgments to which 
attention has already been called. Now, at this point there 



TRUTH AND ERROR 435 

is, of course, a very tempting opportunity for the confirmed 
epistemological sceptic and agnostic to enter his old-time 
objections and protests. For is not every alleged cognitive 
judgment itself as thoroughly subjective as are mere sensa- 
tions, ideas, and the most primary impulses ? And what 
can be meant by "the being and transactions of the really 
Existent," that is not a complex and abstract product of the 
subjective processes of imagination and thinking ? How 
can an appeal be taken to Beality, as though reality could 
get into the mind in some other way than as " appearance " 
in the form of alleged cognitions ? What there is of 
substance in these very objections and protests has already 
been examined at great length. After we have finally 
parted from him who doubts or denies the very possibility 
of knowledge, we cannot consent to tread again with him 
the same worn and weary path through the darkness of 
nescience and doubt toward the light of assured and intelli- 
gent cognition. 

What, however, shall be said in answer to those who, 
like Mr. Bradley, 1 deny that any truth is given in the judg- 
ment, so far as it is cognitive and categorical, and on the 
contrary affirm: "Any categorical judgment must (the italics 
are ours) be false. " " The subject and the predicate in the 
end cannot either he the other." "Quality either adds 
nothing or adds what is false," etc. Strictly understood 
and accepted, such a view of the cognitive judgment would 
seem to place us in the position of the man who, having all 
his life long implicitly believed in the truth of dreams, at 
last dreamed that he was infallibly assured of the falsity of 
all dreams. Thus was he doomed to the perpetual circle in 
arguendo: "If all dreams are true, then this dream is true, 
and all dreams are false. But if all dreams are false, then 
this dream is false and some dreams may be true." What 
a prospect is this, of forever grinding at the mill, while 

1 Appearance and Reality, pp. 361 and 362 (note). 



436 TRUTH AND ERROR 

starving for lack of some small grist of truth ! Understood, 
however, as its author seems to intend, these statements give 
a self-destructive form to the attempt to unite the outcome 
of a sceptical epistemology with a rational system of ontology. 
But men do not mean to identify the " being " of subject and 
predicate, whenever they pronounce categorical judgments; 
neither do they understand that the truth of their thinking 
is dependent upon the metaphysical identification of this 
thinking and what is real. Nor do they, any more than 
does Mr. Bradley himself, regard Reality as a rigid Entity, 
totally independent of all change, movement, and Life, which 
must be known completely and as it eternally is, if it is^to 
be known at all. 

The further qualification that judgments are to be con- 
sidered either true or false only in so far as they assume to 
be cognitive, enables us much more clearly to distinguish 
the nature and to define the limits of both truth and error. 
Here another consideration respecting the nature of all 
actual judgment becomes important. For every judgment 
exists, as a realized product of the Self, only after it has 
been both framed and pronounced. So far as psychological 
analysis can throw its light, whether derived from introspec- 
tion or from experiment, into the very centre of this subject, 
judgment is dependent for its very realization upon some 
form of motor activity. Men universally incline to assev- 
erate with one kind of motor symbolism and to deny with 
another. They posit, plant, ground their propositions; or 
they withhold, uproot, and withdraw them. They detect 
themselves as setting into some form of action, often in 
talking over with themselves, the series of judgments which 
leads up to the terminal judgment; and this they love to 
"establish" and make clear and impregnable to themselves 
by repeating it over and over again. Whether such motor 
expressions of the judgment must be accounted essential for 
the individual in order that he may recognize and adopt its 



TRUTH AND ERROR 437 

truth as his very own, or not, it is obvious that one man's 
cognitions can be made the subjects of another man's judg- 
ments only as they are set into reality by some motor ex- 
pression. The acceptable human form of expression for the 
cognitive judgment is language. That is to say, truth and 
error are customarily predicated of alleged cognitive judg- 
ments as expressed in verbal propositions. 

And now in considering the nature of truth and error, and 
in endeavoring to determine defensible limits between them, 
the task becomes twofold. The question as to the truth or 
falsity of any judgment is thus always connected with, and 
generally much complicated by, this question: What does 
the judgment, as propounded, actually mean, both to the one 
judging and to others who are asked to pass judgment upon 
it ? For what a judgment really is cannot be known apart 
from what the judgment, as expressed, means to the inquirer 
after its truth or falsehood. So that theoretically the ex- 
perience becomes necessary which we find to be actual in 
our every-day intercourse with men: We cannot, from the 
primary point of view of epistemology, pronounce any judg- 
ment either true or false until we know tuhat such judgment 
intends to affirm or deny as understood by the mind that makes 
the judgment. It has been seen, however, that cognitive 
judgments are not perfectly rigid and unchanging connec- 
tions, established once for all between concepts which are 
themselves conceived of as unchanging entities. Nor do the 
words in which men's judgments are announced have a fixed 
and unchanging meaning. Far from it; each one of them 
embodies the attempt to catch and formulate an indefinite 
number of doings of the really existent world of Self and of 
Things. Reality is much too varied and agile in its life- 
expressions, as well as lofty and profound in its principles 
of behavior, to be caught, firmly held, and fully encom- 
passed, by as many words as the average man can master the 
meanings of. Moreover, each one of these words changes 



438 TRUTH AND ERROR 

its meaning — on the one hand, gaining a richer content, 
and, on the other, being more precisely delimited ■ — as the 
growth of knowledge goes on in the individual and in the 
race. Still further, all words, in those meanings which 
afford the most direct and inviolable expressions of the 
reality known, are apt to be employed figuratively. Every 
student of language knows how children and childish peoples 
express the truth as it is revealed to them, and indeed often 
most fitly and beautifully, in figures of speech. The highest 
abstractions of science and philosophy can find words in 
which to embody themselves only as they consent to be 
more or less artistic and indefinite in the meanings assigned 
to those words. Has it not been proved, indeed, that the 
truth of our most assured cognitive judgments concerning 
what the world of things really is can be vindicated only by 
regarding it as being and behaving like the Self ? Its quali- 
fications are known as they really are, only on the supposi- 
tion that the analogies embodied in our language are justifiable 
figures of speech. We are far, indeed, from holding that no 
distinction is to be made between so-called "real truth" 
and error, or that all contentions for the truth are best 
resolved by the acknowledgment that, after all, the dispute 
is only a logomachy. On the contrary, there are not a few 
subjects where contest for the truth against error is a war 
to the knife; and the ongoing revelation of Reality to the 
human mind will practically annihilate one party to the 
strife. Yet, in general, a most fruitful way of helping our- 
selves and others into the truth, and of eliminating error, 
is to bring about an understanding as to what each alleged 
cognitive judgment actually means to the one propounding 
it. Socratic midwifery alone will never rid the woods of 
all manner of daemons of falsehood, sprites of untamed fancy, 
and unsubstantial ghosts of doubt; but it will much improve 
and multiply the regions held by the family that derives its 
lineage from essential truth, the faithful mother of a chosen 
race. 



TRUTH AND ERROR 439 

Truth and error, then, are most fitly attributed to judg- 
ment, but only in so far as it is cognitive, and is under- 
stood according to the meaning given to its expression by 
the judging mind. He whose only failure consists in the 
misemployment of terms for announcing his cognitive judg- 
ment commits, indeed, a serious fault. His judgment, if 
adopted by others as their own, in accordance with the 
meaning they are forced or deceived into giving his terms, 
may be wholly or largely false. But if, with the meaning he 
gives the terms, the judgment announces a fact or a remoter 
relation in reality as known to him, it is more properly 
called incorrect in expression than false or erroneous as 
tested by a standard of truth. This limitation of the episte- 
mological significance of the terms "truth" and "error" 
enables us to understand two classes of subjects that stand 
farthest apart, as ordinarily considered. We are accustomed 
to beins; told that the most certain and unassailable of all 
truths are the truths of mathematics ; but that the senses of 
men move in the peculiar realm of illusion and error. Yet 
are not both truth and error always defined with reference to 
realities ? And what student of the purest and highest 
mathematics is so ardent as to claim that his formulas 
represent the real being and actual transactions of things ? 
On the other hand, where do men come face to face with the 
reality of things, in such way that all human knowledge of 
them depends ultimately upon the validity of this inter- 
course, except in the field of sense-perception ? Must it, 
then, be admitted that the most assured truth gives no 
knowledge of reality; and, on the contrary, that all seem- 
ing knowledge of the reality of things is mere " appearance " 
or sheer " illusion " ? 

What is the nature of the truth which mathematics 
imparts; and what is the relation in which this truth stands 
to actuality, whether of Self or of Things ? The correct 
answers to these questions confirm instead of contradicting 



440 TRUTH AND ERROR 

the theory of knowledge which we are advocating. For 
the premises, reasonings, and conclusions, of the "purest" 
mathematics are properly called true only so far as they are 
known to correspond to the real being and actual behavior 
of our world of cognition. And yet, of all kinds of knowl- 
edge mathematics and formal logic are remotest from reality, 
— most " pure " in proportion as they are most unreal, 
imaginary, and abstract. Nor is this an occult truth which 
needs the assistance of epistemology to disabuse the mind 
of the mathematician or logician of his erroneous pretence 
of knowledge. For example, let us suppose that the conclu- 
sion of some course of algebraic reasoning might be correctly 
expressed by the formula x = ^/y% _ \ ; in what sense can 
the judgment of such a formula be said to be known to 
be true ? Only as reference is made to the being and 
transactions of something really existent. If it is proposed 
to test the truth or falsity of the conclusion, appeal may be 
had to a series of mathematical terms united by signs of 
equality and inequality, of addition and subtraction, etc., 
upon a sheet of paper, to see if repeated inspection by the 
senses will reveal any "error" in them; or some other 
series of other terms, based upon the same premises, may be 
employed in order to test, or prove, the correctness of the 
suspected series. But the truth obtained in this way is not 
expressed when it is satisfactorily shown that two little 
black marks crossed (#), and two short lines parallel (=), 
and a v with a long arm extended on its right side (V ), 
etc., are placed precisely in such an order, rather than some 
other, upon this particular real sheet of paper here dis- 
played. Surely, this is not the meaning for reality which 
such a series of algebraic judgments possesses. But neither 
is it meant that any really existent thing has its being, or 
its behavior, correctly represented to imagination or to 
thought, either by the statical relations of these symbols, or 
by the movement of the argument through which the state- 



TRUTH AND ERROR 441 

ment of the relations is reached. The " purer " and " higher " 
our mathematics becomes, the less conceivable does it 
become that any thing or number of things should " realize " 
the truth of such processes in its own real being and actual 
behavior. Even if the supposed case be one of applied 
mathematics, the truth of any conclusion such as x = ^/y3 _ \ 
does not depend upon some real thing being discovered, to be 
called x, and some other real thing to be called y ; and then 
upon these two going through exceedingly complicated but 
mutually dependent processes in order actually to arrive at 
a sort of statical agreement with each other — after the 
pattern of the successive strifes and partial reconciliations 
in the thought of the mathematician which end in peace 
being declared on terms of x = */y3 __ ]_. The truth of 
mathematics, indeed, gets an approximately exact realiza- 
tion whenever things, being taken quantitatively and measured 
and counted, as ail things may be, undergo changes in size 
or in spatial relations, corresponding to those symbolized 
by algebraic and geometrical formulas and demonstrations. 
But it must not be overlooked that the truth in reality of the 
formulas and demonstrations, as thus regarded, is always 
only approximate and conditional. That is, so-called mathe- 
matical judgments are held to be true for things only in case cer- 
tain presupposed conditions continue to be fulfilled by the things; 
and even then only in so far as the things are quantitative 
and quantitatively related. But what the actual conditions 
are under which things exist, and act, and change, can 
only be known by our experience with them; and this expe- 
rience bases itself upon cognition of the actuality only so 
far as cognition takes place through the senses. 

What now, however, shall be said as to the truthfulness of 
the axioms and demonstrations of "pure " mathematics, both 
arithmetical or algebraic, and geometrical ? The answer to 
this question depends upon understanding how the funda- 
mental conceptions of mathematics originate, and why it is 



442 TRUTH AND ERROR 

possible to arrange them in satisfactory form. This answer 
may be given in the form of a paradox. The pure mathe- 
matics are so undoubtedly true, because they are so inde- 
pendent of, and one might even say so false to, the real 
being and actual transactions of things. For things always 
are much more and other than merely quantitative ; and the 
behavior of things is determined by many other considera- 
tions than those of the mathematical order. Water is, for 
example, approximately described in terms of quantitative 
analysis, by the formula H 2 0. But both oxygen and hydro- 
gen gases, and the compound resulting from their combina- 
tion in terms of this formula, are, and are able to accomplish, 
infinitely more than this formula describes. When, then, 
mathematics becomes perfectly pure, the truth it tells con- 
cerns nothing more than the way in which a certain kind of 
our thinking enables, or compels, us to relate its own abstrac- 
tions. For, so far as pure geometry knows, its space is a pure 
abstraction ; and so far as pure algebra knows, its numbers 
and symbols stand for pure abstractions. The truth here is 
the truth known as determined by a certain thinking and ide- 
ating activity of the Self. I not only know that I can regard 
things as capable of being counted and as actually extended 
in space, but I also know that I can abstract from all the 
concrete qualities, definite dimensions and space relations, 
which things as known by the senses have; and I can then 
treat the concepts of number, and of space qualities and 
relations, as though these concepts were themselves real 
objects of knowledge. The truth thus immediately known 
belongs to the actual behavior and real life of the Self ; it 
can be carried over into the world of things only upon the 
bridge of that analogy to which reference has so frequently 
been made. 

We sec, then, that the truth of mathematics is twofold 
in its aspects; but in both of its aspects it looks toward 
Reality for its sole testing and justification. In so far as 



TRUTH AND ERROR 443 

experience shows us that things actually obey the laws of 
number and of quantity, our mathematical judgments may be 
cognitive of things. Truth and error are not abstractions 
here. Every building that falls, every bridge that goes 
down, because of miscalculation as to amount of strains or 
strength of materials, is a terribly real proof of this. But 
when sophists deny motion or change in reality, because 
the mind can so juggle with mere abstractions as to show, 
with logical satisfaction, that the arrow cannot really fly or 
Achilles actually overtake the tortoise, they are more 
ingenious in needless self-deception than either knowing or 
wise. For human cognition affirms that the arrow does fly; 
Achilles and all the spectators know that he soon overtakes 
the tortoise. The puzzle which arises when it is asked, 
How can this really be ? does not require any alteration of 
judgment as to the nature either of knowledge or of reality. 
For the puzzle consists in the sceptic's foolish effort to 
make that true for the actual world of things which is only 
conceivably possible even when abstractions, recognized as 
such on one side, are, on the other side, identified with 
realities in a false and illogical way. 

How far Reality follows human mathematical conceptions 
and imaginings as to what It might be and do, if things were 
only a system of merely quantitative beings, we have no off- 
hand means of saying. The appeal must be made to cogni- 
tions of sense. We learn a little more about this as our 
knowledge of things grows. But the complete failure of 
mathematics to describe and to explain the actual World 
is increasingly apparent. The theoretical ass of Buridanus 
could not move toward either bundle of hay, so subject was 
his "being" to the dominion of mere quantity. But then 
there really is no such ass anywhere, — not even among the 
most primordial and undifferentiated of the forms of pro- 
toplasm, or the atomic subjects of the law of chemical 
equivalence. We ourselves are governed by various other 



444 TRUTH AND ERROR 

considerations, and have many other ends to realize, than 
those of pure mathematics. How far this is true of the 
Other Self, man can scarcely be said to know ; but there are 
certain reasons in human experience which lead to the ap- 
prehension that It cannot be bound strictly by the axioms 
and formulas of the most speculative mathematicians. 

From time immemorial the illusory and hallucinatory 
nature of that knowledge of things which comes through the 
senses has been celebrated, not only by reflective students of 
the phenomena of perception from psychological and philo- 
sophical points of view, but also by poets, essayists, and 
religious enthusiasts. This epistemological conclusion has 
generally been more or less closely connected with ethical 
and practical interests. Thus the " sensuous " side of things 
has been held to be the seducer of the mind into paths of 
error, and of the spirit into ways immoral and prejudicial to 
the interests of the higher good. Modern physical science 
has naturally felt no little repugnance toward such a view 
of the nature, the limits, and the tendencies of the cognition 
of material things. It has aimed to establish the superior 
claims to exactness and certitude of this kind of cogni- 
tion ; and even to extend its method by using mathematical 
formulas for the expression of quantitative qualifications 
and relations, over all the fields of human knowledge. It 
has pointed with justifiable pride to the recent extension of 
the dominion "ruled over" by known laws; and it has 
expressed high hopes that the barriers to its further almost 
inconceivable advances would even be overcome. All this, 
it has held, is happening so as greatly to benefit rather than 
to injure the practical and ethical interests of man. Of late 
there has been a growing disposition to admit that " scientific " 
knowledge would somehow be found to be not wholly incom- 
patible with religious faith and emotion, even if the ancient 
basis of accepted truths of religion were quite removed. 
A certain curious inconsistency of opinion has seemed, 



TRUTH AND ERROR 445 

however, to characterize the modern defenders of physical 
science as respects the truthfulness of the plain man's cogni- 
tive judgments touching the reality of things. On the one 
hand, the scientific attitude toward sense-perception is that 
of confessed confidence and even of deference amounting to 
homage. No one more excites the scorn of the " scientist " 
of to-day than does the speculator who, like certain quondam 
disciples of Schelling or Hegel, evolves a JVatur-philosophie, 
or elaborate system of metaphysics of physics, from his own 
higher consciousness in accordance with a preconceived 
theory of "Ultimate Reality." "Back to nature," and — 
in all cases of disputed conclusions — again " back to 
nature," is the inspiring and promising call of the scientific 
Zeitgeist. But, of course, there is no other way to get back 
to nature than that of regarding the facts, as they appear to 
the trained and careful observer through his bodily senses ; 
and while modern instrumental equipment furnishes an 
enormously increased range of perceptions within which 
thought may inquire as to what is true and what is false, 
it contributes no wholly new order of facts from which to 
derive a new standpoint for testing the truth and falsehood 
of our preconceptions touching the nature of Reality. The 
highest powers of telescope and microscope, the most deli- 
cately sensitized photographic plates or cunningly devised 
apparatus for spectroscopic analysis, the startling new exhi- 
bitions of " Roentgen rays " afford, after all, no less an " ap- 
pearance" to sight, a mere visual phenomenon, than does the 
naked eye of the unscientific man, as he moves about among 
things visible for the transaction of his daily business. In- 
deed, new doubts and wranglings over what is actually 
observed constantly accompany the exploration of these 
new fields. And the most cautious and thoughtful of ex- 
plorers are coming to confess that the same frailties and 
bias from intellectual and emotional prejudices must he 
guarded against, with even increased diligence, if truth 



446 TRUTH AND ERROR 

and error are to be separated in the scientific observation 
of things. 1 

On the other hand 5 it is constantly more apparent that the 
underlying strata of hypothetical metaphysics are quite as 
extensive in the domain of modern physical science as are 
the cultivated fields of fact, open to the inspection of all 
observers. These facts afford the witness of a general con- 
fession that truth or error about things is not wholly a matter 
to be determined by sense-perception; and when joined to 
other facts and inferences, they may lead the student of 
epistemology to inquire whether, after all, a defensible 
theory of knowledge and of metaphysics are not equally 
necessary to save both the scientific and the ordinary 
cognitions of things from being convicted of complete in- 
validity. 

Meantime, certain advances in the psychological science of 
perception have brought the epistemological problem before 
the age in a somewhat new and more emphatic form. The 
"new psychology" has devoted itself with commendable zeal 
and industry to the scientific investigation of illusions and 
hallucinations, as mental phenomena. No doubt, it has 
sometimes conducted these investigations with a blameworthy 
forgetfulness that certain epistemological truths must be 
assumed in any investigation. Whenever, for example, 
any theory of possible errors of self-consciousness ("double," 
"triple," or otherwise hallucinatory) threatens the funda- 
mental cognitions of Self, — as real, unitary, ancf existing 
in relation to other realities, both selves and not-selves, — 
it is approaching the limits where all its own claims to scien- 
tific character must be let slip into the bottomless pit of a 
self-contradictory nescience. Whenever, too, the psycho- 
logical theory of illusions and hallucinations in sense- 
perception assumes to involve in doubt all knowledge by the 

1 See, for example, the instance referred to ; " Psychology, Descriptive and 
Explanatory,'' p. 511, note. 



TRUTH AND ERROR 447 

senses, it becomes itself involved in those same primary fal- 
lacies which afflict every species of sceptical idealism. 

Our previous critical examination of the nature and certi- 
tude of human knowledge authorizes and compels the view 
that the terms "truth " and " error," with their full epistemo- 
logical significance are properly applied to sense-perception. 
Even to speak of illusions and hallucinations of sense im- 
plies, in such manner that the implicate cannot, so to speak, 
be separated from experience or from the terms chosen to ex- 
press it, that in sense-perception men reach cognitive judg- 
ments which are truly representative of the nature and the 
relations of things. Indeed, from almost equally justifiable 
and serviceable points of view, one may proclaim the appar- 
ent paradox : Cognitive judgments, as based upon immediate 
perception through the senses, are in general both true and 
also more or less illusory and hallucinatory. This paradox 
follows from the nature of perception as a form of knowledge, 
and from the nature of the reality known by perception. 
For, on the one hand, perception is a complex cognitive 
process that is dependent subjectively upon an indefinite 
number of factors, which are different for every individual 
perceiving mind, and which change in the very event of every 
individual perception. But, on the other hand, the reality 
known in sense-perception is no rigid and unchangeable 
somewhat; it is not a thing, or a system of things, that is 
precisely one and the same for all perceiving minds, or for 
every individual perceiving mind in all of its perceptions. 
Perception, on our part, is an actual process of change, a 
living and moving achievement of mind, resulting in cogni- 
tive judgment. Nor is the cognitive judgment to which the 
very terms of truth and error must be applied a rigid entity, 
with its two parts, or poles, bound in an adamantine way to 
one another under the logical principle of identity. Even 
far more abundantly able is the reality of things to lend that 
infinitely varied Life which displays itself diversely (and all 



448 TRUTH AND ERROR 

the more wonderfully and beautifully thereby) to the percep- 
tive consciousness of every man. He commits the funda- 
mental error, from which he must retreat with shame and 
confession before he can know the highest Truth, who denies 
that the world of the really Existent is actually rich enough 
in content to correspond to the varied cognitive judgments of 
all perceiving minds. 

This correct view of truth and error in sense-perception is 
not an esoteric mystery, but is something habitually con- 
fessed by the language and action of men ; nor does it render 
unessential and inoperative the distinction between truth 
and error in this realm of cognition. On the contrary, it 
validates the distinction and also gives it value in the place 
where the teleology of all cognition is most apparent, — 
namely, in our use of things. To illustrate this, let us take 
an example. You rise in the morning, and glancing hastily 
from the window declare that it has been snowing in the 
night ; or, having put on hat and coat, you go out into the 
open air and soon affirm, " It is colder than it was yester- 
day, and the temperature must have fallen in the night." 
But in the one case an error of inference may be corrected 
by pointing out that the judgment " The ground is covered 
with snow " was due to the glister of the pavement under 
the reflected light; in the other, consulting the thermom- 
eter may convince you that the truth would be expressed by 
simply affirming, " I feel colder than I remember to have felt 
yesterday, probably because of a poor night's sleep." Such 
mixtures of what men call truth and error are, as every one 
admits, frequently found in the cognitive judgments of men. 
In cases similar to the former of these two, an error of 
fact, due to hasty observation, has led, by otherwise legiti- 
mate inference, to an erroneous conclusion; in the latter, an 
indisputable truth of fact has been assigned, by illegitimate 
inference, to a wrong cause. In neither of these cases, nor 
in any similar cases, is there any element of the experience 



TRUTH AND ERROR 449 

which contradicts true epistemological doctrine touching 
human knowledge of Self and of Things, as it has already 
been defended against a sceptical idealism or agnosticism. 
Nor, as a matter of universal experience, does the admix- 
ture of illusion with truth impair the confidence of man- 
kind in the possibility of some assured cognition through 
the senses. 

Suppose, however, that two observers, equally confident in 
the trustworthiness of their own senses and equally mindful 
of the necessity of care in the use of the senses, pronounce 
opposed judgments as to any real thing or actual event. The 
final issue of their self-criticism, as well as of their argu- 
ment with each other, is the conclusion, on the part of X, 
that A is B ; and on the part of Y, that A is not B. Now 
any one of several suppositions — which, if needed, are satis- 
factory to men in general and actually often employed — will 
save the situation from the agnostic conclusion that no 
assured truth whatever is obtainable by the senses. Grant- 
ing that both X and Y are communicating to each other the 
exact state of their case, — that is, are expressing their 
respective judgments of an alleged cognitive order so as to 
represent their actual experiences, — the following supposi- 
tions are possible : either one or both of these subjects may 
be abnormally defective in respect of the particular sense 
chiefly involved ; or the intellectual and assthetical culture of 
X may make it possible for him to perceive in A certain 
qualifications (B) which are denied to Y, and therefore 
denied by him as belonging to his A ; or, again, it may be 
that A actually is both what X and Y understand by B and 
also by not-B. Our examination of the nature of cognitive 
judgment, as falling under the supreme controlling prin- 
ciple of identity, has shown us that it is only the particular 
judgment, as made at this time and by this particular cogniz- 
ing mind, to which the principle of non-contradiction in its 
absolute form is properly applied. The principle of identity, 



450 TRUTH AND ERROR 

in other words, does not limit the rapidity of change, or the 
multitude of the phases, of which any real things are actually 
capable. But upon either of the foregoing assumptions, the 
truth of both the cognitive judgments that seemed contradic- 
tory would much outweigh the error that could be fastened 
upon either. In other words, true knowledge of real things 
by the senses is understood by every one to be knowledge of 
them as they appear through the senses. And when it is 
admitted that the same real things appear differently to 
different minds, and even to the same mind at different 
times, this is only affirming the correct epistemological view; 
for this view makes the perception of things dependent upon, 
and relative to, the perceiving mind. This view is also en- 
tirely compatible with the true metaphysical doctrine, which 
finds the ground of the different appearances, not solely in 
the differing mental processes, but also in things themselves. 
For cognition, however gained, is of the nature of a com- 
merce between conscious mind and the really existent ; but 
in this commerce both the mind as cognitive and the really 
existent are, so to speak, all alive. And my truth is not 
the less truth, because it is mine ; nor is truth any less cor- 
rectly described as a correspondence between the cognitive 
judgment and the being and transactions of the really 
existent, because the details of the form of this corre- 
spondence are so indefinitely varied. My perception of 
things may be as true as yours, although it contains factors 
which yours lacks or lacks factors which yours contains. 
Nor does it follow that both of us are partially in error, or 
even that one of us is wholly in error, because we squarely 
and honestly judge seemingly contradictory attributes to 
belong to the things perceived. For you and I are still two 
judging minds, although perceiving the same thing. And 
no Tiling is so mean and poor in content that it cannot re- 
veal itself to various minds in an unknown variety of ways ; 
while the limitations of all knowledge by the senses may 



TRUTH AND ERROR 451 

very easily cause that to appear as contradictory to you 
which is a matter-of-fact qualification of my cognition. 

When, then, I correct a so-called error of sense-percep- 
tion, whether in myself or in some one else, I effect a 
partial readjustment of the cognitive attitude of some mind 
toward reality which brings it nearer to the standard of the 
common judgment as tested by the most approved means of 
determining that standard ; but I neither make a confession 
of the untrustworthiness of sense to afford any knowledge of 
reality, nor do I afford any new kind of truth regarding the 
relation in which the reality stands to the sensuous experi- 
ence of men. The fundamental positions of epistemological 
theory are left unchanged. The conclusions warranted in 
the interests of psychological science may be stated, on 
both sides, in the following language. "Looking first at 
the side which disparages our knowledge of things as they 
really are, the following considerations present themselves : 
All mental activities are involved in common acts of percep- 
tion. ... In this complex process (perception of the quality 
of weight) the data of sense are profoundly modified by cen- 
tral states and activities. . . . What we call normal percep- 
tion involves many illusory influences — not only those of 
physical and physiological origin, but even more so those 
due to the functions of ideation, memory, and imagination. 
Indeed, suggestion and imagination control all our percep- 
tion by the senses. . . . But on the positive side, confirming 
us that somehow we perceive things as they are, several 
important facts may be observed. Illusions work according 
to laws which may generally be determined. As these 
become known we may gradually learn how to rule out the 
illusion. The known physical and physiological illusions 
do not necessarily delude us, because we may make allow- 
ance for them. Similarly, we may now make an approxi- 
mate allowance for the illusions of weight and for all other 
illusions, due to intellectualized feelings, as they become 



452 TRUTH AND ERROR 

recognized. The view that illusions and hallucinations do 
not act according to law is as wrong as the view that mind 
in its normal capacity is lawless. The more thoroughly we 
become acquainted with the laws of illusions the more 
accurately will our sense-perceptions fall in consensus." 1 

Once more, the way in which the emotions, interests, and 
plans of men, as well as the limited and imperfect nature of 
their mental activity, lead them to blend remoter inferences 
with the content of apperception as immediately given, affords 
much of the needed explanation for the illusory and halluci- 
natory character of many sense-perceptions. Here again, 
however, a partial relief is found, and an added justification 
against the conclusions of unlimited scepticism, in the doc- 
trine of the aesthetical character and the teleological import 
of all human knowledge. Indeed, what we properly call 
illusory and hallucinatory from the psychological stand- 
point, may itself become a guide and a helper to an enlarged 
and nobler growth of knowledge. This is, in part, the real 
truth involved in Kant's doctrine of an illusory logic, 
natural and unavoidable for all human reason. But, "in 
part," only; for truth given in emotional and figurative form 
is still truth. And the being and behavior of the Self and 
of Things, when mentally represented by art and by religion, 
may be quite as faithful to the Reality as when cognized only 
from other and lower points of view. 

The existence and significance of truth and error in all 
forms of science is to be explained in accordance with the 
same principles. But the peculiar nature of so-called scien- 
tific cognition involves special combinations of these prin- 
ciples. All science may, from the epistemological point 
of view, be considered either as chiefly descriptive or as 
largely also explanatory. As merely descriptive, if the term 
" science " is to be applied to such forms of knowledge, the 

1 From an article by C. E. Seashore, Ph. D., in " Studies from the Yale Psy- 
chological Laboratory," iii., pp. 66 f. 



TRUTH AND ERROR 453 

truth or error belongs to the cognitive judgment when 
understood to be affirmatory of the facts of self-consciousness 
and of sense-perception ; as a form of knowledge, then, the 
epistemological theory of descriptive science has already 
been sufficiently considered. In general, however, no cog- 
nitive judgments offer themselves for critical discernment of 
the truth or error which is in them that do not admit of 
some sort of express or implied reference to grounds. Both 
the psychological and the epistemological doctrine of judg- 
ment agree in affirming that thinking and inferring enter 
into those propositions about the truth or falsehood of which 
men inquire and debate. But science is pre-eminently 
conceptual knowledge; and thus to it, as explanatory, the 
considerations which have been taken into account, in refer- 
ence to the valid application to Reality of the principle of 
sufficient reason, especially apply. The effort of scientific 
research, as well as the reward of scientific discovery and of 
reflective thinking, consists largely in the improved and puri- 
fied conceptions gained, and in the more accurate and well 
certified bringing of these conceptions together as terms in 
cognitive judgments of general validity. 

In order better to understand what kind, and how much, 
of truth science affords, and what is the nature of its errors, 
one may consider the subject in the following way. The 
general form of the purely scientific judgment is, as has 
already been pointed out, the hypothetical : If A is B then 
Cis D. As employed in the extension of that knowledge 
which scientific classification embodies and advances, this 
form of judgment means: If any newly perceived being or 
event is like another already conceptually known being or 
event in certain particulars (if the perceived A has the 
attributes B), then one may, with a good degree of safety, 
expect that it will be like in certain other particulars ; and 
one may put all such beings or events into a common class 
bearing the same name (then one may affirm that, as being 



454 TRUTH AND ERROR 

0, it has not only the attributes B, but also the attributes 
D). But as employed in the extension of explanatory 
knowledge, this hypothetical judgment is affirmative of 
influential connections or causal relations. It may then be 
interpreted, somewhat crudely, as follows: If anything or 
group of things is behaving in a certain recognized way (if 
A is acting according to the well-known formula B), then, 
looking backward, one may infer, that something else has 
furnished the reason for this, by itself previously behaving 
in a certain way ; or else, looking forward, one may expect 
that the behavior of something else in its own way will find 
its reason in the observed event (if the perceived event is a 
case of A-is-B, then either the ground, or the result, or 
both, may be inferred as a case of (?-is-D). But the hypo- 
thetical judgment, considered as in any sense explanatory, 
may itself be thrown into the categorical form: "A-is-B" 
and " C-is-D " then become judgments dependently connected ; 
but, after being united in the hypothetical judgment, "If 
A is B then C is D," they remain cognitive judgments only 
in case a connection in reality is somehow established for 
cognition between them. The truth of the hypothetical 
judgment, then, like the truth of every other form of judg- 
ment (like all " truth ") must be referred to the test of reality. 
And this reality, like all that reality in correspondence to 
which every alleged cognitive judgment is tested, is neither 
a merely formal correspondence of the judgment to the bare 
rules of our understanding, nor a super-cognitive entity (a 
hypothetical and abstract Ding-an-sich) ; but it is the reality 
given in experience. How such reality is given in experi- 
ence has already been explained in detail, both with reference 
to Self and to Things. 

So-called scientific truth has, then, only the same founda- 
tions to stand upon as those upon which all truth reposes. 
It is truth verified by experience in the properly guarded 
and well-trained use of cognitive faculty, — especially, of 



TRUTH AND ERROR 455 

course, on account of the nature of its objects, if it be the 
science of things which is under consideration, in the use 
of the senses in observation, and of thought in elaborating 
the facts gained by observation. Errors arise in science, 
as certainly (however less frequently, if even that can be 
maintained) as in perceptions of the ordinary, unscientific 
kind. To certain forms of error, which depend upon the 
remoteness from that testing of the concrete and more imme- 
diate cognitions of sense to which thinking must carry its 
processes, science is peculiarly liable. But this very liabil- 
ity is the price science has to pay for its superiority in the 
height and breadth of its conceptual knowledge. And its 
final aim is to eliminate progressively those sources of error 
which arise in the unguarded and untrained or ill-trained 
use of cognitive faculty ; while at the same time, by a sort 
of organic growth, in which many vital elements under the 
influence of common vital forces take part, and by preserv- 
ing the sound portions of the building of other generations 
and adding to them from age to age, it proposes to outgrow 
many of its old mistakes and to improve the quality and 
certainty, as well as increase the number, of its valid cog- 
nitive judgments. 

What theory of knowledge and what conception of the 
nature of Reality are needed in order to validate the cogni- 
tions of science ? How shall our minds escape the doubt 
whether it be not all — this goodly temple of modern knowl- 
edge with its foundations upon the bed-rock of fact and its 
stones inspected by skilled and critical eyes as they are pains- 
takingly built into the structure — no more truly valid trans- 
subjectively than is a fair and stately dream ? That I am 
not the whole of this world, that things other than myself 
exist, I can by no possibility doubt. But what is there that 
my science gives me which is true as corresponding to this 
Other Being and to its actual Transactions ? We see no way 
to answer, and no prospect of the discovery of any way, that 



456 TRUTH AND ERROR 

neglects the faithful use of the fundamental postulate to 
which reference has so frequently been made. The " scien- 
tist " who does not accept the validity, and the value, for 
Reality, of the conception of things as a system self-organiz- 
ing after the analogy of the self-known Self, can only com- 
fort his doubts with the beauty and formal consistency of his 
own dream. Knowledge would seem, somehow, to be denied 
to him except on terms of repentance and of faith. 

The more fruitful discussion of the Sources of Error 
must be in the main psychological and logical. But the 
philosophical theory of knowledge enables us to see how 
errors naturally and necessarily arise in the employment of 
cognitive faculty under the conditions of human life and 
human mental development. For knowledge is not an affair 
of presuppositionless and "pure" thinking; or of immediate 
insight with a clarified and full-orbed vision into the inmost 
mysteries of Absolute Being; or of disinterested and dis- 
passionate ratiocination from indubitable premises, along 
clear and unobstructed dialectical lines, to an absolutely sure 
and universal conclusion. Only the immature Paracelsus 
dare say : — 

" I saw no cause why man 
Should not stand all-sufficient even now, 
Or why his annals should be forced to tell 
That once the tide of light, about to break 
Upon the world, was sealed within its spring." 

Grown wiser and more experienced in both truth and error, 
the critic of human faculty from the highest attainable point 
of view discerns how the case really stands with man, ■ — a 
case to be pleaded, in the interests neither of an unrea- 
sonable transcendentalism nor of an equally unreasonable 
agnosticism. 

" Power — neither put forth blindly, nor controlled 
Calmly by perfect knowledge ; to be used 
At risk, inspired or checked by hope and fear : 
Knowledge — not intuition, but the slow 
Uncertain fruit of an enhancing toil, 
Strengthened by love." 



TRUTH AND ERROR 457 

As arising out of the nature of cognitive faculty the 
sources of error may fitly be considered under two heads : 
first, such as spring from the inevitable, natural limitations 
of cognitive faculty ; and, second, such as come from a par- 
tially remediable but universal lack of energy and of balance 
in the use of cognitive faculty. The doctrine of the limits of 
knowledge, as it is connected with the doctrine of degrees of 
knowledge, has already been sufficiently discussed. But the 
inherent weaknesses of man's mind in its efforts to attain 
and to enlarge its system of assured cognitive judgments, not 
only necessarily result in setting limits to his knowledge, 
but they also inevitably conduce to an admixture of error in 
these judgments. In saying this, we must not be under- 
stood as retracting our former contention that partial truth 
is not to be identified with error; nor do we revoke the 
more recent claim that the variety of the cognitive judg- 
ments which different men pronounce respecting their most 
immediate experiences with the Self and with Things is, to 
a large extent, an enlargement of the total sphere of truth 
rather than of error. But these same limitations do also, 
in some sort, commit the most carefully guarded and finely 
trained minds to no small amount of positive error. So 
that the complaint of being not only bound to know little 
truth, but also destined to accept as knowledge much not- 
truth, is by no means without foundation in the very nature 
of the cognitive subject. Here again, however, there are 
reliefs to be gained from taking the higher and more com- 
prehensive points of view; from these are discerned the 
teleology of all knowledge, and the more fixed and important 
relations between knowledge and what men call "Reality." 

The natural limitations of the human mind, in respect of 
each one of those various forms of functioning which com- 
bine in cognition, and in regard to each kind of the objects 
and fields of cognition, are undoubted. In the use of all of 
the senses for the attainment of that knowledge of things 



458 TRUTH AND ERROR 

which comes in this way, the more precise qualification, the 
intensity, the time -rate, and the field or content possible 
for one "grasp of consciousness," are limited. And since 
sense-perception essentially consists in interpretation of 
sensuous data into terms of ideation and thought, misinter- 
pretation may result from any one of the several kinds of 
limitation. When the intensity of the sense-consciousness 
is stronger or weaker than a certain indefinite and variable 
limit, the cognitive judgment is, as we say, il more or less 
sure " to be erroneous. The same thing is true of the time- 
rate of sense-consciousness; errors increase in the cognitive 
judgment as this rate rises above or falls below a certain 
limit of best results. Be as honest and faithful in the use 
of the senses as one possibly can, one is thus doomed to 
many so-called mistakes. For attention itself, the indis- 
pensable condition of the accuracy of our discriminations 
and of the truth of our recognitions cannot possibly be kept 
at a constant strain. But all men, to some commendable 
degree, succeed in correcting, or at least, in making rough 
but practically fruitful allowances for most such errors. In- 
deed, it is in acquiring just this sort of skill that the train- 
ing of the senses, and of mental faculty through the senses, 
so largely consists. More particularly, the modern experi- 
mental study of psychology is trying — and with some suc- 
cess — to investigate these errors of sense, to point out their 
causes, and to discover their laws. What has already been 
ascertained shows that errors of sense are not nearly, even 
in the average and untrained mind, so numerous as they 
might be, if the adaptation of the senses to the truth of cog- 
nitive judgment were less firm and obvious. For example, 
there are few more uncertain mental processes of the sensu- 
ous order than those concerned in the localization of sound ; 
yet the average person, when as attentive and discriminating 
as he can be, makes a relatively small percentage of serious 
errors ; and some of the more serious possible errors he never 



TRUTH AND ERROR 459 

makes at all. So that, if one were at liberty to say that 
man's cognitive faculty, as employed in the localization of 
sounds by the ear, is given to him in order that he may, by 
a fair amount of care and cultivation, get along well with 
things acoustic, one would have no reason greatly to blame 
the author of this faculty. 

The more definitively and elaborately intellectual pro- 
cesses, by reason of these natural and unavoidable limita- 
tions, lead the mind into not a few errors. Because one 
cannot think more than so quickly, or so intensely and 
clearly, or about more than so many things, what thinking 
one can do when at one's best, not infrequently goes wrong. 
Memory, too, in its most definite and trustworthy manifesta- 
tions, cannot be implicitly relied upon to give accurately the 
details of our own past experiences with ourselves; and 
when it is summoned into the court of self-consciousness to 
bear witness to the truth as to past experiences with things, 
the errors of the original observations may become more 
important. In all such matters, no clearly marked and 
fixed line can be drawn between ordinary and scientific 
knowledge. More or less careful observation, and more or 
less careful thinking, enter into both. And into both may 
enter the errors resulting from the unavoidable limitations 
that hedge round all observation and all inference. But 
the presence of many errors, now more or less heartily con- 
fessed and more or less completely abandoned, in that body 
of scientific knowledge which has been growing through past 
generations, is undoubtedly the more impressive fact in 
proof of the unavoidableness of human error. 

Indeed, the more complex forms of conceptual knowledge 
are peculiarly liable to certain kinds of error. To those 
who justly value such knowledge highly, the temptation is 
almost irresistible to make the clear and the logical the 
measure of the true. If the advance line of science did not 
yield to this temptation, and so constantly maintain that 



460 TRUTH AND ERROR 

what the minds of explorers, unrestrained by the control of 
other and seemingly contradictory facts, think ought to be 
true is true (the general postulate that Reality is throughout 
rational), then science itself would not advance so rapidly as 
it does by the aid of hypothesis and of experimental testing. 
On the other hand, in this way the body of accepted scientific 
truth is itself always so constructed as to retain within 
itself a certain amount of material in the form of erroneous 
conceptions. But in time, the facts plainly refuse to validate 
many of the most rational conceptions ; and the saner minds, 
first, and, finally, the multitude of the students of the par- 
ticular science either greatly modify or wholly abandon 
them. Here, indeed, the error may be said to be — abstractly 
considered — avoidable. For it is conceivable that all men 
should hold the valid application of as yet unproved hy- 
potheses as to the reality of things, in a hypothetical ivay. 
A most interesting example of this may be seen in the his- 
tory of the table by which Mendele'eff undertook the orderly 
and regular grouping of the chemical elements. This con- 
jectural arrangement resulted in two correct predictions 
which elements have since appeared to observation to verify ; 
but it also resulted in even a larger number of mistakes. 

It is often exceedingly instructive to see how, when 
pressed hard with questions from the seeker after only 
well-verified knowledge, the most ardent advocates of favored 
scientific hypotheses admit the necessary distinction. For 
example, some years ago, in his pleased recognition of the 
significance of certain Western "finds," Professor Huxley 
is reported to have publicly proclaimed the still doubtful 
hypothesis of biological evolution to be on a par, for its 
undoubted truthfulness, with the law of gravitation. But 
did this man of science actually know, not to say sincerely 
believe, just that ? Even the law of gravitation is, so far as 
the greater number of the physical masses in the universe 
is concerned, itself still an unproved hypothesis. In this 



TRUTH AND ERROR 461 

connection it may be well to refer to those indubitable facts 
of our cognition of things in which all confidence in even 
the limited action of human intellects as applied to things, 
has its foundations : These are sufficiently summarized by 
Wundt 1 as (1) the independent variation of the material and 
the formal constituents of perception; and (2) the constancy 
of the general properties of the formal constituents. But 
there is ample reason to suppose that the natural limitations 
of cognitive faculty prevent us from representing, without 
large admixture of error, both the variable constituents and 
the formal constants of things, precisely as they really are 
and actually behave. 

At this point there enters into the doctrine of error another 
important consideration which is unavoidably due to the 
natural limitations of cognitive faculty. We have seen 
that all positive and detailed knowledge of other objects than 
the self-known Self is analogical. This would seem to 
render our alleged cognitive judgments more sure and defen- 
sible within certain middle grounds. What is here meant 
may be illustrated as follows: In the cognition of one's Self 
there is a certain region where all seems clear and undoubted. 
Here I, with a perfect assurance, know myself as I really 
am. When discussing the degrees and limits of knowledge 
(pp. 243 f. ) it became perfectly evident what is this region of 
most clear and indubitable cognition, But surrounding this 
region, and separated from it by no fixed and indelible lines, 
are regions below, above, and on either side. There blends 
with this well-known life of mine a being that I know only 
much more indefinitely and doubtfully or not at all; it is 
characterized by obscure instincts, by animal impulses, by 
vague, inchoate, and unmeaning ideas, by unanalyzable and 
fitful emotions and sentiments. I may speak of this as the 
"lower self," if I choose. That of which it is apparently 
the analogue may be observed in the lower animals, or in 

1 System der Philosophie, pp. 116 f . 



462 TRUTH AND ERROR 

childish and savage human minds, or in the subjects of 
hypnotic trance, the insane, etc. Moreover, when I try to 
understand the earlier developments of the Self I call my 
own, I find my observations most often baffled, and always 
somewhat sorely in doubt whether my own mental represen- 
tations correspond to the reality there. In this lower region 
of obscurity and confusion, my cognitive faculty is likely to 
be, on account of its natural limitations of adaptation to 
what appears as a higher sphere of being, largely at fault. 

Again, above the region of greatest clearness and certitude 
there seems to be another region of possible cognition, into 
which I enter with more or less of confidence as borne thither 
on the wings of analogy, but where I am not alike sure of 
being free from erroneous conclusions, — do the best I can 
do. In my own Self I find certain insights, anticipations, 
aspirations, confidences, and sublimer hopes and fears, to 
which I give signification in proclaiming the cognitive judg- 
ment : " I am something more and higher than my present 
weak and erring human self." I, too, have a divine Being; 
the higher life of the Supreme Reality is actually present 
and operative in my life. This is, indeed, what I cannot 
understand or make intelligible to others as I can the judg- 
ments which affirm the facts and laws of the middle region 
of my experience with the Self. Possibly — nay, probably, 
and even assuredly — there is more of not only incom- 
pleteness but of positive error in the precise forms of those 
judgments by which concepts formed on the basis of such 
experience are united in a totality of mental representation. 

And now I look wonderingly toward the heavens and 
listen to the marvellous tales of the modern astronomer ; or 
I peer through the microscope at the indefinitely small, and 
hear the biologist discourse concerning the mysteries of 
bacteriology or of the physiology of plants. To the huge 
masses overhead I ascribe force, obedience to law, and all 
the equipment necessary to playing their part appropriately 



TRUTH AND ERROR 463 

in the drama of the universe. To the micro-organisms, too, 
I give an important place in the later acts of the same great 
drama, and speak boldly of their being and their perform- 
ances in terms that are meaningless unless they imply some 
controlling principle from a sort of all-embracing Life. 
But it is chiefly when I contemplate the phenomena of 
human development, the ethical, political, social, and re- 
ligious evolution of mankind, that I feel the impulse and 
the need to construct my conception of Reality, as a whole, 
in terms to satisfy this higher Self of my own. Let it be 
noticed, however, that, on the one hand, I am always bound 
in the interests of clear thinking to make this construction 
with a consciousness of an increasing danger of error as I 
get further away — using the same principle of analogy — 
from the clear, middle regions of my own experience as a 
Self. But, on the other hand, I am at no time really for- 
saking the guidance of thought or making a blind rush into 
the by-paths of an irrational faith. I am simply extending 
the one principle of all cognition into regions which, while 
they are never to be separated by a fixed and unalterable 
barrier from those of our most assured cognitions, are, 
nevertheless, regions where the principle must be more 
doubtfully applied. 

This, however, is itself a conclusion derived chiefly from 
the more purely intellectual considerations that bear upon it. 
There is need that it should be supplemented and possibly 
modified by considerations derived from the doctrine that 
all knowledge, judged from the point of view of its worth, 
is teleological ; and that ethical and sesthetical " momenta " 
enter into all the higher forms of knowledge. 

The metaphysical factors, or ontological functionings of 
mind in cognition, are natural sources of error. This is, 
of course, true only when these factors are themselves 
required or allowed to take part in that cognitive judgment 
whose truth or falsity is under consideration. All truth — 



464 TRUTH AND ERROR 

such is the nature of cognition — flows from a sort of trans- 
subjective compulsion ; but we do not satisfactorily account 
for this compulsion when we follow Kant in ascribing it 
solely to the constitutional forms of the functioning of 
our own intellect. The rather is it also a necessity which 
has its source in the nature of eatfra-mental Reality. 
When, however, the attempt is made more carefully to define 
the character and the extent of this necessity, and to 
describe the laws or universal forms of its operation, we 
enter the realm where error is almost certain to mingle 
with truth. Some of such error, too, is due' to the natural 
and unavoidable limitations of human cognitive faculty. 
For it is not possible by thinking alone, to know completely 
the grounds of one's own being, or to put into incontro- 
vertible form, for knowledge, the laws which we actually 
follow in our cognitive commerce with the real being and 
actual transactions of things. We are here — in the em- 
brace of Reality ! But how we got here, no man may be able 
to tell ; and in the attempt to tell, one is quite sure to com- 
mit not a few errors. Indeed, not a bad case might be made 
out for the apparently paradoxical statement that in those 
subjects which seem simplest and clearest to all men, most 
error is likely to be committed in every attempt to give to 
vague impressions the form of assured cognitive judgments. 
What other books have ever been written that contained 
so much which would not stand the test of the truth of 
Reality, as books on formal logic or demonstrative systems 
of general metaphysics ? In the course of this treatise, we 
have had occasion to show how erroneous, in reality, are 
current conceptions regarding the principle of identity, the 
principle of sufficient reason, the essential nature of things, 
the principle of causation, etc., etc. 1 

1 According to Caspari (Grundprobleme der Erkenntnissth'atigkeit, i.,pp. 156f.) 
three pseudo-concepts result from "overdriven" individualizing: (1) the X of 
the Democritean concept of absolutely empty Space ; (2) the Xoi the Leibnitzean 
"Pre-established Harmony;" and (3) the X of the Herbartian "quiescent Cau- 






TRUTH AXD ERROR 465 

In the development and use of cognitive faculty, the 
judgments made may approach ever nearer to, and may 
finally become, a species of conduct. Thus some judgments 
are held to be, like every species of conduct, not simply cor- 
rect or erroneous, but also commendable or blameworthy. 
For in the thought and practice of men, the possession of the 
power to know carries with it an obligation, under the 
recognized natural limitations from which no man can 
escape, to make our judgments true and not false. From 
this point of view also, actual errors are graded, in a rough 
way, from those into which the wisest man might be almost 
completely excused for falling, down to the most inexcusable 
and blameworthy of falsehoods and lies. Here ethics joins 
hands with psychology and logic for the execution of a work 
in which all have a common interest, — namely, the purifica- 
tion of judgment. But epistemological theory explains all 
such errors sufficiently for its purposes by simply pointing 
out that they may be ascribed in general to the unbalanced 
action of those different forms of functioning which are 
combined in the formation of every judgment. This view 
scarcely needs more than a single illustration or two. 
Thus in the use of the senses, under the control of will, 
undue haste may lead to the formation of judgment on 
insufficient data ; but undue sloth and tardiness of movement 
in the Blickpunht of attention may cause a similar erroneous 
result. Lack of emotional interest may at one time be a 
source of errors similar to those for which excess of emo- 
tional interest, at other time, accounts. In the expressly 
guarded and more refined observations of the physical and 

sality." As pseudo-concepts arising from excessive generalizing, he instances the 
"mathematical Indeterminate," the " Absolute" — whether as Ding-an-Sich, Ab- 
solute Idea (Hegel), Will to Live (Schopenhauer), or " the Unconscious " (Hart- 
mann.) The source of about all metaphysical error is the attempt to explain 
light out of darkness. Thus we have Stoff-an-sich in one place and Form-an-sich 
in another. (This, we remark, is the really delusive dualism, and not that of our 
concrete experience, as it actually exists between mind and body.) 

30 



466 TRUTH AND ERROR 

natural sciences, judgment takes up into itself the charac- 
teristics of the affective tendencies and forms of bias 
belonging to the investigator. The investigations of the 
psychological laboratory confirm what the most obvious 
experiences lead us to suspect; hour by hour, and respecting 
the simplest and plainest of matters, men judge wrong 
under a great variety of not wholly unavoidable influences. 
Thus the shrewd observer is always on his guard against 
being deceived by his own changing emotional tendencies, 
as well as by his more settled habits of conviction, and by 
the lower but always pervasive physiological and physical 
conditions. But this very shrewdness, when itself exces- 
sive and full of natural suspiciousness, has prevented many 
a man from knowing in a satisfactory way much of which 
he would most gladly have been assured. Indeed, the higher 
wisdom often leads one not to be too nice about details, lest 
one commit the graver error of misjudging or neglecting 
the important matters. And just as we are congratulat- 
ing ourselves that we have thus escaped mistakes and have 
gained a firmer and more comprehensive grasp upon the 
truth of reality, we find some seemingly trivial oversight 
has revenged itself by convicting of error our entire care- 
fully prepared case. Neglected trifles have succeeded in 
throwing many a scientific brief out of the highest court of 
appeal. 

It is with such experiences in mind that men often most 
eagerly and hopefully inquire after some universal Criterion 
of Truth. Surely, they think, the Spirit of all veracity 
should have provided them with a conclusive standard, a 
general infallible judgment regarding the necessary and 
universal characteristics of all valid cognition. If this can 
only be discovered and carefully applied, it will preserve 
them from every error. But a more seductive will-o'-the- 
wisp than this was never proposed. There is no single, 
infallible means of testing truth — known, conceivable, or 



TKUTH AND ERROR 467 

possible. If a criterion of truth were discovered, we should 
indeed have all honest souls paying any price of industry 
and self-renunciation to possess so great a treasure. But 
the very nature of truth as dependent upon the characteris- 
tics of the cognitive judgment is such as to render absurd 
the conception of a single and universally applicable crite- 
rion. The nearest approach one can make to the bare 
conception of such a criterion of truth is that evidence 
which is found in our clearest, most feeling-full and content- 
full, voluntary self-consciousness. But the attempt to apply 
such a criterion to all human cognitive judgments would 
defeat itself in a most annoying, or amusing, or disastrous 
way. The very attempt would render all growth in knowl- 
edge impossible; it would bring upon one the charge of a 
ridiculous and monstrous egoism, and would prove quite 
impotent to tell one anything worth knowing about the real 
being and actual transactions of things. Moreover, the 
mind that demands such a criterion needs to be brought, in 
no gentle fashion, up against the chastening reminders that 
life consists in something more and other than sitting down 
to test judgments by a cunningly devised scale of absolute 
values. Better be happy and effective in action that is full 
of intellectual blunders, than be miserable and inactive 
through the effort to conform the intellect to so machine- 
like measurements. 

Criteria for testing, in a more or less satisfactory way, 
the various kinds of judgments which their makers esteem 
cognitive, are not wanting, however. They are as abundant 
as are the different main forms of corrective discipline 
which human life affords for all who share in it. The 
whole course of infantile development consists in getting the 
understanding and application of these criteria better in 
hand. The practical test of the child's early judgment that 
the lighted candle or burning coal is a species of good, to 
be made further acquainted with by taste and touch, is the 



468 TRUTH AND ERROR 

experience which follows the effort to set that judgment 
into realization. Of all the so-called criteria of the false- 
ness or truth of judgments, such practical tests, if obtain- 
able, are most valuable. So that there is really no demand 
made which is out of the natural order when alleged truths 
of politics, ethics, or religion are recommended to a similar 
criterion. The well-known tests of scientific hypothesis 
and induction are not, in principle, markedly different. 
All criteria are included in the persistent effort of the indi- 
vidual and of the race to arrive at an harmonious and satis- 
factory experience. Such an experience necessarily includes 
all that can be gained, by growth of knowledge, toward an 
harmonious and satisfactory explanation of experience. 
But, as we have already seen, experience is much larger 
than cognition. And the sphere of cognition is larger than 
the sphere of judgment, even when the judgments are estab- 
lished by proof most satisfactory to the intellect. Knowl- 
edge itself is a vital body, a vital growth. 

When, then, any particular alleged cognitive judgment 
is pronounced, it appears in consciousness, by virtue of its 
very claim to be cognitive, as the solution of some problem 
respecting the real being and actual transactions of things. 
It carries within itself, for the mind pronouncing it, a 
demand for the acceptance (" Belief ") either of some object 
of sense-intuition so-called, as a really existent other " not- 
me," or of some truth about objects, regarded by the mind 
as resting on such or such grounds. It is this " reference 
for proof (in the wider and looser meaning of the word) to a 
somewhat separate from us, and not possessed by us, which 
gives their peculiar significance to the expressions of cer- 
tainty and logical compulsion. " l Thus the criteria of the 
first order for the testing of the truth of every cognitive 
judgment are properly thought of as an integral part of the 
judgment itself. 

1 See Volkelt, Erfahrung und Denken, p. 283. 



TRUTH AND ERROR 469 

Any cognitive judgment may, however, have its truth 
challenged and the further demand made that it shall submit 
itself to a process of critical examination or testing. This 
demand may arise from within the judging mind, and thus 
constitute a proposal to apply the criteria furnished by 
other outlying factors of the individual's experience; or it 
may arise from without and because the alleged cognitive 
judgment is not found harmonious and satisfactory to other 
judging minds. In either case the pronouncing of the judg- 
ment is held suspended, as it were, until this particular 
alleged cognitive factor in the sum of experience can be 
submitted to a process of testing. Here not only will other 
judgments, more or less firmly established and built into 
the very texture of the mind, exercise their influence under 
the general demand for a conscious intellectual harmony, 
but also will the emotional prepossessions and voluntary 
tendencies of the individual mind contribute their share to 
the process. Nothing is more instructive on this subject 
than to notice how men, as an obvious matter-of-fact, apply 
tests to those new forms of judging truth which disturb the 
harmony of their mental life. In the last resort, no crite- 
rion lies further back or lower down than this same sense of 
harmony. But alas ! there are few minds, indeed, which 
succeed in bringing into such an harmonious and satisfac- 
tory condition the various items of truth which their total 
experience seems to present. 

In the larger life of the race the testing of truth, for the 
elimination of error and the confirmation of the truth itself, 
goes on through the ages in essentially the same way. Only 
here there is no wider and more inclusive experience to 
which the individual minds of any age may make their final 
and most convincing appeal. For, even if one admit the 
fullest reasonable claims that can be made in the behalf of 
revelations of truth that break in upon the race from the 
Source of all Truth, these revelations themselves can ulti- 



470 TRUTH AND ERROR 

mately get accepted only as they are able to submit to essen- 
tially the same criteria; and being accepted, completely or 
partially, they become integral parts of that experience of 
the race which is itself the. ultimate test. But to admit 
this statement is a very different thing from accepting the 
tenets of either the current empiricism or the old-fashioned 
rationalism. The depth and height and breadth of this 
difference can be appreciated only by recalling all that has 
already been said concerning the transcendent in human 
experience, and concerning the wealth of assured content 
which belongs to human knowledge, beyond anything that 
mere ratiocination can supply. 

It appears, then, that there is no cause for overweening 
confidence in man's cognitive powers to afford insight into 
the complete interior nature of Reality, as it were ; but even 
less cause for despairing of all knowledge and for resorting 
to either a sceptical or a dogmatic doctrine of universal 
nescience. The plain man's consciousness, in his simple 
work-a-day transactions with things and observations of him- 
self, cannot set itself up as the measure of all the truths 
of science and philosophy. It affords no so very penetrat- 
ing insight into the real nature of things, and no systematic 
and well-reasoned cognition of Self. But it has in it the 
everlasting truth of the Ego's self-active Life ; and it enables 
its possessor to make his own the ancient mystic saying of 
India, "That too art thou." The feeling of the unity in 
difference of the Self, and also of its oneness with the 
World, are present as the abiding truth of all such knowl- 
edge. " Cock-sure " science and arrogant philosophy, claim- 
ing either a perfect immediate insight or an irresistible 
apodictic, cannot vindicate themselves in the presence 
of a correct doctrine of human cognitive faculty; they 
contradict the experience of the race with both truth and 
error. But he who brings against science and philosophy 
the railing accusation which Milton more fitly brought 



TRUTH AND ERROR 471 

against the makers of civil law, that they are perpetu- 
ally "hatching lies with the heat of jurisdiction," can- 
not speak the few words of his accusation without 
implying an excessive confidence in his own science and 
philosophy. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 

OUR critical examination of the epistemological problem 
has constantly brought us nearer to the place where 
it seems to merge itself with, and be lost in, the larger prob- 
lems of all human life in its relations to Reality. And, 
indeed, what is more obvious than that knowledge cannot be 
considered as a phenomenon separable from the entire com- 
plex existence and development of the race ? It cannot be 
explained as a kind of mechanical combination resulting from 
the fusion, under predetermined forms, of merely sensational 
and ideational factors in the individual consciousness. Other 
theories of cognition, too, which, like that of Kant, include an 
enormous amount of the purely formal a priori, but fail to 
admit the affective and voluntary aspects of the mind's life to 
a share in the cognitive attitude toward reality, are surely 
destined to show this original deficiency, either by theoretical 
inconsistencies and contradictions or by failing to afford a 
practical and ethical satisfaction. Men must live, and strive, 
and die, in the use of their minds. And to put the case in 
a superficial and popular but expressive way : If our mental 
faculties are not " made to live and die by," to guide us in 
our striving after every manner of truth, then either so- 
called knowledge, or the larger conceptions which we desig- 
nate by Life and Reality, are vain and illusory. For the 
cognitions which men have, or think they have, and ever 
strive to get, they insist shall serve some purpose in relation 
to the higher and more comprehensive good. 



THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 473 

In brief, all inevitably regard their own cognitive faculties 
from the teleological point of view. In the higher realms of 
ethics, art, and religion, men are generally prompt enough to 
ask, " What is the use of trying to know ? " How, then, can 
the student of pure science or of philosophy regard the teleo- 
logical question when applied to his own favorite studies as 
unmeaning or impertinent ? 

And, indeed, the question of use, the attempt to bring 
knowledge itself under the conception of worth, is never 
unmeaning or impertinent. For every individual cognition, 
as well as the entire body of human knowledge, not only may 
but must be regarded from the teleological point of view. 
The very structure of cognitive faculty is subject to the 
idea of final purpose ; and if knowledge is to be validated 
as a mental representation of the real being and actual 
transactions of things, then the idea of final purpose must 
somehow find its place in Reality, so far as known or know- 
able to man. Now, as to the illustration of the teleological 
idea in the very nature and development of all human cogni- 
tion, there can be no doubt ; for the facts and data for analy- 
sis exist where they can be approached and studied. But 
as to any corresponding application of the same idea to 
extra-mental Reality, our way of approach is over the bridge 
of that same analogical postulate, which has been found 
necessary to give validity to all knowledge " as to what " 
things really are. The necessity of escape from that ex- 
treme of sceptical idealism or agnosticism which has been 
found intrinsically absurd is, however, just as great in this 
case as in the case of any other form of the inquiry after the 
validity of human knowledge. 

The nature of human knowledge, as revealed especially by 
a study of its origins and earlier developments, shows the 
indispensable part which action takes in the first apprehen- 
sion of things. Only as the child does somewhat to things, 
and has somewhat done to him by things, can he come to 



474 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 

know that they are, or what they are. Genetic psychology 
places this beyond doubt. It is matter of universal observa- 
tion that the inactive child is backward in his apprehension 
of concrete physical objects ; and that the " dreamy " man is 
most apt to doubt the real existence of such objects, as well 
as least aware of how they are to be handled in order to " get 
the good of them." It is action that, moving along organic 
lines in the pursuit of ends, secures growth of positive cognition 
and banishes doubt. For, as has just been indicated, action, 
as soon as it becomes conscious volition guided by ideas, is 
teleological in its attitude toward the objects of sense. In 
the attempt to use anything, the child gains new knowledge 
of that thing; and the success or failure of his attempt, 
starting from the advanced cognitive point of view already 
gained, is a stimulus to the strife after yet more knowledge 
about the same thing. Thus does knowledge grow by use, in 
order to the end of improved and larger use. 

From the point of view of psychological analysis, every 
mental event of a developed order appears as an illustration 
of the idea of final purpose. This is the scientific truth 
which leads to the epistemological position : No cognition can 
be considered as the mere equivalent of its psychic factors or 
psycho-physical causes. As Wundt * has said, even quanti- 
tatively considered, every spiritual event surpasses its causes. 
Perceptions, regarded as mental constructs out of composite 
psychical factors, can never be explained by, or deduced 
from, their sensational and ideational elements. But, on the 
contrary, when we begin by considering what they are as con- 
cerned with the appropriation of things to our uses, and with 
the adjustment of all our changing relations to reality so as 
to live, and to live more abundantly, both as individuals and 

1 So enthalt ein raumliches Bild ausser den Empfindungsqualitdten, die in dasselbe 
eingehen, die specif sche Qualitat des Raumlichen, und diese Qualitat fuhrt exten- 
sive Massbeziehungen mit sich, welche zu den intensiven Grossen der Empfndungen 
hinzukommen. — System der Philosophie, p. 345. 



THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 475 

as a race, the completed perceptions, in the light of final pur- 
pose, impart a new meaning to their own sensational and 
ideational elements. If, from the more mechanical point of 
view, psychology is warranted in describing the perceptions 
as what they are, because of the sensations and images of 
sensations which enter into them, and even in maintaining 
that perceptions exist at all only as the sensational and idea- 
tional basis is laid in the psycho-physical mechanism, still from 
the teleological point of view, epistemology also is warranted in 
holding that the active mind, in order to secure its own good, 
has selected and combined these particular elements into the 
totality of the perceptive construct. 

Only as the full force of the teleological principle is admit- 
ted, can the fact be satisfactorily explained that percepts of the 
same things by different minds are so different. On this point 
it would better accord with a true doctrine of knowledge to 
say that only the teleological view of all perception by the 
senses shows us why things are so different as they are known 
by different cognitive subjects. For every man is forced to 
know things according to his capacity for receiving impres- 
sions and retaining and reviving ideas ; but every man also 
consciously strives to know things according to the relations 
in which they seem to him to stand to his own purposes for 
attaining a good. Things impress one according to one's sen- 
suous and ideating faculty ; but one also knows them for 
what they seem worth to one in the carrying out of one's ends. 
To the man who cares to know nothing further, a Stradi- 
varius is "no thing" but a fiddle. To the modern violin- 
maker it appears a model replete with lessons as to the 
selection and disposition of various materials, the shaping 
and combining of parts, the soundness and texture of belly, 
back, and bridge, the curvature of sides, etc. But to its art- 
ist owner it is an instrument of his musical ideas and feelings, 
— an instrument, and something much more ; it is a tried 
and sympathetic servant, a beloved and comforting compan- 



476 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 

ion. To the mind's eye of the physicist, however, it appears 
as a collection of molecules and atoms whose acoustic prop- 
erties come under the laws of his science ; or whose wonder- 
ful performances may furnish new problems to that science. 
But which of these — and if none of these, what — is the 
real violin ? The very question, in connection with the expe- 
rience out of which it arises, shows that all perceptive cog- 
nition of things is teleological ; for perceptions themselves are 
mental constructs depending upon the selective action of will 
as guided by ideas in the conscious pursuit of some end. 

The same truth may be maintained with reference to the 
construction and development of those abstract mental pic- 
tures which, speaking from the psychological point of view, 
constitute our means for the classification and recognition of 
things. The schemata, or general images of sensuous objects, 
are mental constructs whose very nature embodies and illus- 
trates the principle of final purpose. Men's perceptions of 
things differ, according to the selective action of will in pur- 
suit of ends ; but their ideas of things differ in the same way 
more abundantly. One's mental image of a thing cannot 
contain sensational elements of which no sensuous experience 
has ever been given ; but one's mental image of any class of 
things is even more dependent upon what one wants of those 
things ; that is, upon one's perceptions. What is called a con- 
cept must be regarded as a mental construct ruled over by the 
principle of final purpose. It is described by logicians as a 
complex of marks that have been abstracted from a num- 
ber of objects and combined into a totality which is valid 
for application to any one of those objects in as far as it 
belongs to the class. The concept of a " man " will tell you 
what X is, as a man, simply ; but it will tell you nothing as 
to " what sort of a man " he is ; in order to know that, you 
must know X. 

But I am no more set free from the rule of the teleological 
idea when I fall back upon the general conception of man, 



THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 477 

and agree with myself not to take the trouble to know X in 
particular, than I am when, equipped with this concept, as it 
were, I deliberately enter upon a " plan-full " course of proced- 
ure having for its conscious purpose the detailed acquaintance 
with this individual. For I may be forced at once to raise 
and answer the question : With what end in view have you 
formed your conception of a man ? And to which one of the 
many possible sorts does this conception of yours answer ? Is 
it the mere exterior semblance of an erect biped man ; or the 
man scientifically defined from the point of view of biology 
and anthropology ; or the business man's man, with whom 
one may barter, and whom one may estimate, for purposes of 
trust, by referring to the lists of some Commercial Agency ? 
Is it the man as he constitutes a possible constituent of some 
domestic or social combination ; or man with an immortal 
soul to save or lose, according to the theologian's point of 
view ? In any and every case it will appear that the concept 
must be regarded as a construct which has been framed from 
elements more or less consciously selected with particular ends 
in view. Its so-called " general " character is, indeed, sup- 
posed to be framed after the pattern of certain eatfra-mentally 
existent characteristics of a similar kind possessed by a num- 
ber of individuals. And from this metaphysical point of view, 
the concept appears causally determined, irrespective of any 
use to which it may be put by a conceiving mind. But from 
the tora-mental, or rather the psychologico-social point of 
view, the truth appears, that all men want certain ends to be 
served for them by their fellows ; therefore, they agree in 
forming a so-called general concept of " Man," which may be 
regarded as established and made compulsory in its accept- 
ance, quite irrespective of individual ends. Even this restric- 
tion to the limits of the control exercised by the teleological 
principle in its application to the conceptions of the race is 
only apparent. Indeed, the restriction itself illustrates the 
truth of teleology. For one finds one's self compelled to clas- 



478 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 

sify men as both knowers and known, according as they have 
it in mind to be scientific, or commercial, or social, or reli- 
gious, etc. And if one thinker feels bound to know no man 
after the spirit, but only after the flesh, others may side with 
the Apostle and declare : " Wherefore henceforth know we no 
man after the flesh." In which case it does not seem to be 
determinable a priori that one point of view will be any more 
arbitrary or unproductive of genuine knowledge than the 
other. The question may still be raised : Which is the real 
man to whom the true concept rightly applies ? 

In fact, however, both psychological and philosophical 
study of the nature of cognitive judgment has shown that 
neither perceptions nor conceptions can be understood as 
mental entities which exist in some sort of separateness from 
reality. For it is this judgment which creates them both ; it is 
cognitive judgment which makes any of our psychoses capable 
of being brought to a standard and pronounced either false or 
true. It is continuity in the growth of the faculty of forming 
such judgments — more clearly, with richer content, with 
firmer and more unassailable reasons and corresponding con- 
victions, under the control of developed will and in the ser- 
vice of higher and purer emotions — that binds together into 
a spiritual unity the entire life of the soul. Such judgments, 
however, always affirm some sort of relations as existent in 
reality. These relations, as the judgments affirming them 
become connected together into so-called chains of reasoning, 
are thought of as connections which actually exist between 
the different real beings and actual transactions of the world. 
Thus the connections themselves become a problem for the 
thought of man to solve ; and in solving this problem it is 
necessary to consider them not merely as falling under the 
principle of sufficient reason, but also as subject to the idea of 
final purpose. This teleological necessity arises from the very 
nature of thought as leading up to the terminal judgment of 
cognition. Indeed, both the principles of sufficient reason 



THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 479 

and of final purpose originate in the same root of experience, 
— namely, in the consciousness of a Self which mentally de- 
termines its ends, in the view of certain fixed relations 
already known to be sustained toward other beings, and 
which directs its actions toward these chosen ends, while it- 
self existing within a system of beings on which the results of 
its action are dependent. 

In the work-a-day life of the multitude of men — that 
which is so significantly called " real life " as distinct from 
the pursuits of the mere student or scientific inquirer — they 
think only in order the better to carry out their purposes. 
Thought, in its effort to put the thinker into correct relations 
with Reality, is definitively and consciously practical; that is, 
teleological. There is certainly something sublime about the 
way in which the meanest of human beings regards all other 
selves and other things. " What is it good for, to serve 
me ? " — this is the chief object of human inquiry and re- 
search. The multitude are made indignant or aggrieved by 
the immense and fundamental forces of nature when these 
forces so elude their insight or calculation as to thwart, or 
even fail to further, their final purposes. Why should winds 
blow, except to swell the sails of their ships ? Why should 
science discover new means of mining and reducing ores, of 
smelting and hardening metals, of driving and controlling 
carriages, except for the increased comfort of themselves and 
their families ? Even the cold, calm stars, so far beyond the 
influence of human passions and so remote from the more 
obvious connections with human interests, must needs be 
thought of as set to light and to guide their way by land or 
sea. All these things, and all other things, they will think 
or inquire about, only to know how better to realize some 
final purpose in the obtaining of good for themselves. 

When considering the nature of all reasoning faculty as 
coming under the general principle supposed to control every 
process of reasoning, we discovered that the end of every such 



480 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 

process is set by some terminal judgment. The particular 
judgment sought is knowledge valid for the relations of really 
existent beings. To quote (p. 308) : " It appears, then, that 
the goal of that cognition after which the mind strives in its 
processes of reasoning is the establishment of causal relations." 
That is to say, Reality in its different interrelated manifesta- 
tions is a problem to be solved, if at all and however partially, 
by consistent and persistent thinking. To reverse this state- 
ment, — and it certainly admits of being reversed without 
impairing its truthfulness, — all our more deliberate thinking 
is essentially teleological ; it is thinking toward the end of an 
improved solution of some proposition placed before the mind 
in the form of a problem. Is the case really thus or other- 
wise ? What do you judge about it ? But if one's judgment 
is not already formed, or prepared to leap into consciousness 
with that firmness and warmth of conviction which indicates 
a readiness also to allege satisfactory grounds for itself, one 
must still think about the matter ; and one will think soundly 
and successfully, indeed, one will think about this matter at 
all (instead of merely letting thought run wild), only if one's 
thinking be suffused with conscious final purpose. 

It is true that many of the " best thoughts," both of the 
individual and of the race, " occur to," or " spring up in," or 
" flash upon," the mind when it is not consciously directed 
toward the solution of any definite problem ; or, at any 
rate, they do not seem to be born of thought directed upon 
particular problems. In his strong despite of the work of 
intellect, that baser tool of Will which is indeed only a func- 
tion of the brain, Schopenhauer exalts the function of intuition 
and the province of insight. Place yourself before the con- 
crete image of the thing in Nature or in Art, and, without 
thinking, but the rather carefully abstaining from all that 
making of distinctions which is so fatal to the apprehension 
of the Idea, let the higher truth arise within you : such is his 
exhortation. We, too, admit the value of the contemplative 



THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 481 

as distinguished from the scientific attitude of mind toward 
Reality. We are prepared to maintain the validity of the 
judgments often largely arrived at by this method of cognition. 
The artistic and religious views of the world, or of any single 
meanest thing in the world, are not to be despised, either in 
the behalf of common-sense or in the name of science. But 
this way of using an alleged cognitive faculty only affords 
another kind of illustration for the correct epistemological 
theory of all cognitive faculty. Artists and seers, men of 
insight of every description, seek to interpret the meaning of 
the real things and actual transactions of the world ; and all 
interpretation of meaning is peculiarly a teleological affair. 
So that art and religion — like philosophy in this respect, 
which, however, transcends both by comprehending them in 
harmony with the standpoints of science and of the ordinary 
work-a-day consciousness — habitually tell us the truth they 
have to tell, in its adaptation to promote the interests of the 
total life of man. The fact remains, however, that there is no 
such way open to truth as that which Schopenhauer, in his 
superabundant and ill-regulated use of figures of speech, 
describes and commends. Artists or religious seers, and 
men of so-called insight generally, must do a bit of clear 
thinking now and then ; or others must do it in their behalf, 
if artistic and religious representations of truth are to enter 
into the organism of human knowledge. Every judgment 
which seers pronounce must still appear before the human 
mind as a problem demanding thought for its better solution. 
Indeed, every announcement of a new truth or of a largely 
modified form of an old truth, is pretty sure to illustrate the 
teleology of all cognition, twice over, as it were. For it is 
likely to be set up, in the first instance, as entitled to recep- 
tion because it gives new meaning and serviceableness to the 
organism of accepted truths ; and then, by a process of test- 
ing, it finally becomes clear that this particular truth is 
entitled, on grounds of the valid connections it can establish 

31 



482 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 

with that organism, to be considered one of its useful members. 
The test of adaptation to the ends of truth never fails, in the 
long run, to be pretty rigidly applied. 

The right to insist upon the inherently teleological nature 
of thought itself might be indefinitely illustrated and con- 
firmed by appeal to the procedure of all the particular 
sciences. All the sciences are full of unsolved problems, and 
these problems are being perpetually " investigated " by 
devotees and experts in these sciences. He who does not 
know what the problems are, and how in general goes the 
approved method of attacking them, is little likely to increase 
the body of cognitions which constitutes his particular science. 
But investigation means a " following in the tracks of," a 
hunt after, some cognitive judgment or set of judgments in 
which the problematical attitude of mind may come to a 
settled and peaceful termination. And, however much of ex- 
periment and mechanism may be used as a means of the 
investigation, all this is merely a matter of convenience, 
which is wholly external to the epistemological doctrine con- 
cerned. For the experimental method and the mechanical 
helps only furnish the guides, the checks, the fixed points of 
attainment, for the thinking process. Investigation is not a 
matter of the smooth running of machinery ; nor are discov- 
ery and verification always most abundant where appliances 
are most numerous and costly. The thoughtful mind must be 
supplied, in order to follow the tracks of fact and of accepted 
law, in the hunt after valid and appropriate cognitive judg- 
ments* Thus does thought itself show most obviously in con- 
crete form its immanent teleological character. 

Few things about the development of human knowledge, 
as illustrated from the history of the particular sciences, are 
more impressive than is the multiplication of problems 
brought about by every solution of a problem. The more men 
know about the world of things, the more do questions present 
themselves about which they must investigate further in 



THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 483 

order to know. In these further investigations the answers 
already obtained to the older problems may be used as known 
quantities ; but this very use either reveals a large number 
of quantities still unknown, or it throws the previous solu- 
tions into doubt, so that the old problems recur in modified 
form. Never before did the picture which human knowledge 
enables us to draw, of the real beings and actual transactions 
of things, itself present so many features that require for 
their clearer delineation yet further and more complicated 
investigations. So often as we feel at liberty to substitute a 
and b for some x and y in a problem, because what was an 
unknown quantity has now been reduced to terms that we 
can comprehend, new and hitherto unsuspected unknown quan- 
tities appear (z, etc., advancing in number toward n) . Not 
infrequently some coefficient must be added to our a and b 
which converts them into terms much more difficult to handle 
than the original x and y appeared to be (perhaps even into a 
/y/- # 2 )- Thus is all growth in scientific knowledge com- 
pelled to regard itself as dependent upon the use of past 
thoughts in order progressively to enlarge and purify the 
body of such knowledge. Each single cognition appears not 
to have its end in itself ; the rather is it of use to suggest 
new problems to thought and to aid in the solution of those 
problems. But as these, in their turn, being at least partially 
solved, become incorporate with the body of cognition, they 
also must be made to serve a new day and a more exacting 
generation of explorers. 

This teleological connection of the truths which constitute 
the body of scientific knowledge, regarded as mere knowledge, 
might be further illustrated by considering how the different 
particular sciences admit of arrangement under the idea of 
final purpose and as respects their reciprocal relations. The 
very nature of the cognitive judgments with which they re- 
spectively busy themselves, is such that the sciences serve 
each other's ends, as those placed higher in a roughly graded 



484 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 

ascending scale of values come nearer to the most complex 
and important interests of human life. Note, here, how 
eager the students of each particular science are wont to be 
in the defence of the claims of their own science to a high 
place in this scale ; how jealous of its honor in answering 
the demands to display these claims before men; and fre- 
quently how grasping and mean in the spirit shown toward 
the students of some other and rival form of science ! 
Thus is one compelled to listen to the arrogant demand that 
all assured forms of human cognition shall be reduced to 
physical or chemical phenomena; and we who are students 
of psychology as the science of mental phenomena are sum- 
moned to acknowledge unquestioning allegiance to " authori- 
ties " — too often self-erected and the more disposed to be 
domineering — in biology or anthropology. 

But even the weaknesses and vices evinced in such con- 
tentions are instructive. More and more obvious and indis- 
putable is it becoming that no one of these great departments 
of human knowledge is going readily to absorb the others. 
The strength of every piece of wood or metal, the behavior 
of a twisted wire or of a bit of magnetized iron, the con- 
struction and use of any simple machine, require much more 
than mathematical physics can furnish, in order that they 
may become objects of scientific cognition. But the prin- 
ciples of mathematical physics may be regarded as the indis- 
pensable means for the attainment of this cognition, and 
for reaching one of the ends for which these principles are 
fitted in the service rendered to such cognition. The chemi- 
cal constitution of the simplest compound substances, and the 
laws of the behavior of the elements which enter into this 
constitution, afford problems which physics is entirely unable 
to solve. But physics affords a species of knowledge which is 
essential in order to solve the problems of chemistry ; its study 
is subsidiary and auxiliary to the end which a knowledge of 
the atomic structure and atomic qualifications of things real- 



THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 485 

izes. Many heroic attempts have been made to convert biol- 
ogy into a purely physico-chemical science ; but they have 
all been baffled hitherto, and the progress of the more com- 
plex study of living beings is constantly outstripping the 
increase in the outfit of means which such physico-chemical 
science supplies. Not an amoeba, however obviously undiffer- 
entiated even as respects endosarc and ectosarc, and not a 
germ of any lowest order of plants, that does not offer prob- 
lems before which the combined efforts of physics and chemis- 
try are forced to acknowledge their impotency. Yet the 
scientific biologist must study physics and chemistry in order 
even intelligently to approach the study of biology. If, now, 
we go on from this point of view to arrange the remaining 
branches of the scientific tree in accordance with any of the 
current schemes, we only illustrate and enforce the same 
truth : All the particular sciences may be looked upon as 
necessary and serviceable to the completer and more satisfac- 
tory knowledge of the history of human development. 

If, however, a scheme for the arrangement of the sciences 
should be constructed from some other point of view than 
that for which the understanding of the unfolding life of the 
race is the final purpose to be served, this altered scheme 
could not be free from obligation to illustrate the teleo- 
logical idea. Such are the connections, in fact, amongst the 
various cognitive judgments that, in order to test and im- 
prove or enlarge any particular group of such judgments, we 
have to make use of means derived from other groups. Tf the 
body of human knowledge be not considered as built after the 
likeness of the human body, where, from one point of view, 
all the other members may be regarded as serviceable to the 
supreme and controlling portion of the nervous system, still it 
must be regarded after the analogy of some sort of an organism. 
A system of cognitions that sustain no relations of reciprocal 
dependence and ministration to the whole body of cognitions 
can scarcely be conceived of as existing within the horizon 



486 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 

of human thought. If the vertebrate be not a favorable type 
for our fittest figure of speech, let it be the radiate or the mol- 
luscan. These, too, are plans of structure, and thus evince 
the immanent teleology of human thinking. Lower forms of 
knowledge in order to higher forms ; or one branch of knowl- 
edge running in one direction away from a common centre 
in which other branches, radiating differently, take their rise ; 
or a hard shell of external fact, which seems lifeless but sur- 
rounds the mysterious and vital " pulp " of truth, — use what 
analogy one will, the thought of the different sciences is so 
related that no student in any one of them can free himself 
from the necessity of serving them all. 

Thus far the teleology of knowledge has been considered as 
immanent, so to speak, in the very nature of knowledge itself. 
Each partial activity or stage of cognition has been regarded 
as serviceable to some other cognitive attainment or advanced 
stage of cognition, — a certain knowledge to the end of more 
knowledge. The particular bodily activities in commerce with 
things, the acts of attentive perception, recognitive memory, 
and ratiocination have been explained as looking to something 
lying beyond themselves ; and the systems of cognitive judg- 
ments grouped together into the so-called sciences have been 
regarded as serving to advance each other's interests. Thus 
does knowledge exist, and grow, for knowledge's sake ; but we 
cannot, however, regard this as a satisfactory statement of the 
final purpose most obviously served by human cognition. 

Is knowledge ever — whether one has in mind some partic- 
ular cognition or the entire development of cognition for the 
race — an end in itself ? This is a question to which neither 
an offhand affirmative nor an unqualified negative affords a 
satisfactory answer. The schoolboy, whining over his tasks 
and rebelling against the limitations thus enforced upon the 
joyful exercise of his powers, angrily inquires as to the use of 
what he is about. How much of all " the stuff " he is set to 
learning will repay him any form of good in his future life ? 



THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 487 

Observe that the request, however disrespectfully made, is 
reasonable : he will have his knowledge serve his Self. But 
if his present point of view seems to be selected too much in 
the interests of selfishness, let him be inquired of, whether he 
does not think that his knowledge should also serve other 
selves than his own. It is not unlikely that a fair answer may 
be obtained to this suggestion, and that the boy's investigations 
into the teleology of knowledge may be so modified as to shape 
the question thus : Of what use to my Self, or to any one else, 
will it be, that I should acquire this particular knowledge ? 
Now before the profoundest student of epistemology undertakes 
the discussion of this question, even as it is asked from the point 
of view of the most ignorant tyro, he must take his choice of one 
of two possible epistemological positions. Either he must 
affirm, or he must deny, that knowledge is rightfully to be 
held responsible in the demand to show its usefulness for any 
end lying outside of itself. Confusion upon this point is by no 
means confined to those whose nearer relations to the petu- 
lant schoolboy force them into unthinking answers to his 
inquiry. For example, the biologist may defend the tenet that 
the very existence of cognitive mind in man is satisfactorily 
explained by showing the usefulness of the more primary 
stages and subsequent developments of mind in the struggle 
for existence. Mind is of use to the end of life, — mere life, 
and more and more of life. But now let the biologist be asked 
this question : Of what use is your own theory respecting the 
evolution of life (Lamarckian, Weissmannian, or other) in pro- 
moting the fuller and higher life of man ? Can he then con- 
sistently fall back upon the alleged truthfulness of his own 
theory to justify it in its seeming attacks upon those faiths 
and hopes which are good for men to live and die by ? 

When the question of the teleology of knowledge takes such 
shape as the foregoing, we begin to realize the awkwardness 
of our mental situation. On the one hand, we cannot satisfy 
our total consciousness with the unqualified claim that knowl- 



488 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 

edge is an end in itself ; and that it may therefore rightfully 
be sought and, when found, promulgated to others without the 
slightest regard to its ministrations in the service of a higher 
and more comprehensive good. On the other hand, we feel 
it unworthy of our rational manhood to regard the use of the 
cognitive faculties of man as having merely an instrumental 
value ; and we shrink from the estimate of the efforts and 
attainments of science and philosophy solely according to the 
services they render to the material advantages of humanity, 
or even to the increase of their pleasures and the alleviation 
of their miseries, as though it were a narrowing and degrading 
estimate. This is an apparent antinomy of a practical rather 
than of a purely theoretical sort. It admits of solution only 
if the limits of purely episteinological discussion be some- 
what transcended, and the philosophy of ethics be taken into 
account as furnishing a possible standard for the required 
estimate. In other words, the question has now become so 
comprehensive in its bearings that it requires light to be shed 
upon it from one's view as to the total nature and supreme 
ideals of the Self. But surely there is nothing introduced 
which is intrinsically foreign to the answers already given to 
the epistemological problem, now that the question has been 
definitively raised as to the meaning and final purpose of our 
total personal Life. For these answers themselves showed 
that this same Self is all concerned — intellect, feeling, and 
will — in every concrete cognition. Nor can the development 
of the individual Self, in its total being, be divorced in theory 
or in practice from the growth of knowledge ; and the same 
thing is true concerning the evolution of that complex organi- 
zation of selves which is thought of as the human race. But, 
further, the world of things — NATURE, " writ large," and 
made imposing by the use of capital letters — is known only as 
revealed upon conditions furnished by the development of the 
Self, and as actually possessed of qualifications analogous to 
those which we know ourselves to possess. How, then, can it 



THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 489 

fail to be true that the question as to the meaning and the 
final purpose of all human knowledge becomes merged in the 
question as to the total nature and ideal ends of Selfhood ? 
The epistemological problem is answered by reference to the 
aims of the Being that realizes the highest and best conception 
of Life. Cognition is part of the very life of the Self ; but it 
is not the ivhole of that life ; it serves that life in its striving 
after the realization of, its ideals. 

The complaining schoolboy is told that he must acquire 
knowledge in order to be happy, respectable, influential, suc- 
cessful in life. For it would be disgraceful for him to remain 
in ignorance ; uneducated, he could never succeed with his 
fellow-men ;. and " knowledge is power." So far as all this is 
true and has a bearing in the direction of a defensible answer 
to his complaints, it means that knowledge is an indispensable 
instrument to a better and more content-full life. Those 
sciences, like chemistry, botany, zoology, physiology, bacteri- 
ology, psychology, and the so-called science of sociology, which 
stand in closer relations to the practical interests of men, are 
fond of showing how much they have done, can now do, and 
hope to accomplish, for making the existence of men more 
tolerable and happy. Meteorology has helped to make the 
farmer surer of his crop and the sailor of his craft ; and do 
we not all. thereby know, at least a trifle better, when it is 
safest to go without umbrellas or overcoats ? The world of 
manufactures has been built up, and the world of finance con- 
vulsed, by the rapid increase of knowledge in metallurgy. 
Even the student of the higher mathematics and the wakeful 
watcher of the stars put forth a less boisterous claim that 
somehow — very indirectly oftentimes, to be sure — the happi- 
ness and prosperity of the race has been increased by their 
discoveries. 

And, indeed, the history of the physical sciences shows that 
those truths which at first seem most remote from the lives 
of men not infrequently become closely connected with their 



490 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 

very ordinary but important interests. In bacteriology and 
physiology, for example, it is not unlikely that to the theoreti- 
cal interest in the problem of life, rather than to the benevo- 
lent desire to benefit mankind, must the recent helpful appli- 
cations of these sciences be ascribed. But this only illustrates 
how man, in the conscious and deliberate pursuit of knowl- 
edge, most often actually serves the end of improving the con- 
dition of mankind. The discoverers in physical science are 
thus justly to be reckoned among the great benefactors of 
humanity. Psychology, too, having withdrawn its long-stand- 
ing offer to theology of an " apodictic " proof for the imma- 
teriality and immortality of the human soul, has recently 
promised to render invaluable services to pedagogy and to the 
therapeutics of the insane and of the criminal. While an 
indefinite number of groups of empirical data, some of which 
have hitherto received only a very vague speculative treatment, 
are now, under the name of " sociology," striving to attain a 
high grade of approbation from the public, by offering the 
services of the science into which they have been agglomer- 
ated, for the improvement of actually existing social condi- 
tions. What if, for the present, the will must be taken for 
the deed ? All these branches of knowledge virtually con- 
fess that they have not their end in themselves, as knowledge 
merely, but that they exist and grow in order to enlarge and 
ameliorate the total existence of man. 

Science, however, is not satisfied with so much of such 
service as it has already furnished or can hope to offer in the 
future. It spends months with the microscope over diatoma- 
ceous deposits or volcanic ash, examines, describes, and classi- 
fies the wonderful minute forms which it discovers, publishes 
the results, to the credit of the investigator and perhaps in the 
name of learned societies ; and then all minds interested in 
science agree that such work is admirable and worthy to be 
done. Who would not be justly indignant at the suggestion 
that the benefit of all this expensive work is to be measured 



THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 491 

by the possible discovery that deposits of the one kind may be 
employed as polishing powder or as a non-conducting packing 
for steam-pipes ; and that deposits of the other kind have their 
most important use in the manufacture of soap ? But, after 
all, why should science go into such matters ; and of what 
real use is much of the knowledge of this kind ? 

At the other end of the line from this infinitely detailed 
description of natural matters-of-fact stand those forms of 
knowledge, or those attempts at knowledge, which are most 
purely abstract and speculative. We have already referred to 
the case of pure mathematics in another connection. It was 
there shown that the truth it discovers is not the truth of 
things, but the truth of possible connections between abstrac- 
tions derived from the quantitative aspects of things. More 
deeply considered, it appears as truth concerning certain forms 
of the perceiving and thinking — the actual transactions — of . 
a reality called mind. In other words, in no other specula- 
tions is thought dealing so purely with its own abstractions as 
in mathematical speculations. But now let the question as to 
the final purpose of such cognitions be raised ; and to repeat the 
answer which is usually given to the schoolboy groaning over 
his first sums in arithmetic, or to the academician struggling 
with the new geometry or with calculus, — namely, that the 
acquiring of this kind of knowledge is in the interests of 
" mental discipline," — is to subscribe, in almost too easy-going 
fashion, to the supremacy of a narrow teleological idea. No 
one likes discipline or seeks it for its own sake. All, however, 
like activity, enjoy being alive in some way ; and all discipline 
is to the end of a fuller, richer, and higher life. If, now, we 
declare that the enlarged capacity of human life, — not only, 
and perhaps not chiefly, intellectual, but aesthetical and quasi- 
ethical, which these studies in mathematics and the natural 
sciences bring —is the end to which the discipline of acquiring 
such cognitions tends, we surely shall not be so very far 
astray. It is not vapid sentimentality, but the application of 



492 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 

truths forced upon us by our entire epistemological inquiry, 
when it is said : Such knowledge is worth while if it makes 
human souls stronger, more beautiful, and more happy. Like 
all other knowledge, it exists and grows in the interests of the 
Self, and for the better progressive realization of the con- 
sciously accepted ideals of the Self. But in saying this the 
essence and the meaning of knowledge have been absorbed in 
the sphere of conduct. 

There are certain cognitions, or attempts at cognition, 
which belong more definitely to the moral and religious sphere. 
With regard to the realities corresponding to these classes of 
judgments when they assume a cognitive form, the actual atti- 
tudes of men are exceedingly various. The average man, who 
has neither great store of scientific knowledge nor gift of 
reflection and speculative thinking, seems to hold a position 
toward the alleged truths of ethics and religion that belongs 
to a sort of middle ground. These truths are not so sure for 
him, nor are they given in the same way to his cognitive 
faculty, as are the ordinary accepted truths about material 
things. He has a different conviction, and a larger assured 
content of knowledge, when he is talking or thinking about his 
material surroundings, having just left off talking and think- 
ing about facts and principles in morals or about the existence 
and attributes of God. But he may be readier to assent with 
heart and head, to take the attitude which he identifies with 
that of knowledge, toward the fundamental truths of morals 
and religion, than toward the speculative mysteries of atoms, 
or of ether, or of fourth-dimensioned space, etc. Moreover, 
he is disposed to be liberal in his demands upon things for a 
perfectly constant and intelligible behavior ; if only his newer 
and more surprising cognitions will minister to a longing for 
the unfathomable, and to an interest in the world as a possible 
home for human Selfhood in its infinite capacity for life and 
for development. 

We are not just now writing a treatise on Ethics or the 



THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 493 

Philosophy of Religion. We are not even discussing what, in 
special, are the foundations and the criteria of truth con- 
cerning these subjects. We believe, however, that such truth 
originates in and is rendered objectively valid by, the attempt 
to harmonize our total experience substantially as all truths 
originate and are rendered objectively valid. What is now 
to be noted is that the more plain teleological import of the 
truths of ethics and of religion is, in itself considered, greatly 
to their advantage. To think on Freedom, God, and Immor- 
tality, and to attain such items of knowledge — such facts, 
conceptions, and judgments although involving large possi- 
bility of mistake and even no little error — as may be had by 
a diligent, judicious, and prolonged endeavor, is best worth the 
while. For in their relations to that final purpose which all 
knowledge serves, and which has been somewhat vaguely de- 
fined as the enlargement and elevation of the total life of the 
Self, these subjects are of pre-eminent final purpose. Knowl- 
edge of diatoms, and of the bones of extinct animals, of the 
probable order of the strata as affecting the possible arrange- 
ment of the biological series in accordance with the Darwinian 
hypothesis, is a good to be obtained, if possible. But one 
ounce of knowledge as to how the soul of man shall attain the 
better realization of its own ideal is worth tons of informa- 
tion as to fact, or of speculative theory, as put forth by the 
researches of the foregoing forms of natural science. 

The statement just made is true, however, only in case one 
is tempted to sever the vital ties which are meant to bind all 
human knowledge into the greatest possible organic unity. If 
the eager advocate of the value of scientific knowledge for its 
own sake is also disposed to depreciate the alleged truths of 
morals and religion because of their uncertainty and uselessness 
from his own standpoint, he may be reminded of the following 
two epistemological principles : All human cognition implies 
a willing, believing, and sympathetic Self ; and all cognition 
has its end in the enlargement and elevation of the Self. But 



494 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 

it is time to consider another important aspect of the teleology 
of all knowledge. To state this aspect as it now appears in 
its most obvious and extreme form : The particular cognitive 
judgments, and the sum-total of cognitions present at any 
particular time in the history of the individual, or of the race, 
must be considered in the light of the principle of final pur- 
pose ; but knowledge itself has been seen to be a certain atti- 
tude of the mind which implies a correspondence between 
mental representations and the being and transactions of the 
really Existent; it follows, then, that the principle of final 
purpose must be immanent in all Reality, so far as known or 
knowable to man. 

The conclusion just announced may be arrived at and stated 
in a somewhat different way. Human experience, when it 
becomes cognitive, becomes essentially £r<ms-subjective. This 
is, indeed, the essential thing about cognition ; it is this 
qualification which gives epistemology its central problem. 
But at its birth, and at every stage of its growth, the system 
of cognitive judgments not only follows the principle of suffi- 
cient reason, but it also goes in the direction indicated by the 
end desired to be gained. Only in this way does cognitive 
faculty fulfil its appointed mission. I want to know; I 
inquire and reason to know ; I actually attain to know, — 
because I want to reach some form of good, or to avoid some 
form of evil. And even that experience which I have with 
real things, so far as they do not seem to be connected with 
my more immediate practical interests, appears significant as 
a complex in which cognition is directed by, and subordinated 
to, the end of a larger and higher life. Now this trans-subjec- 
tive quality of all knowledge, which carries with it the vali- 
dating in reality of the principle of sufficient reason, does the 
same thing with the principle of final purpose. The objects 
of cognition are known not only as connected into a system of 
interacting beings, but also as related to each other under the 
principle of final purpose. They are known as actual!?/ thus 



THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 495 

related ; and this as truly and obviously as they are known to 
be, in reality, causally connected. Here, again, however, just 
as one is obliged to turn to one's most primary experience of 
the Self in order to find out what it is to be, in reality, caus- , 
ally connected, so does one have to turn to another aspect of 
the most primary experience of the Self to discover what it 
is for the idea of final purpose to be immanent in Reality. 
And just as all human knowledge of what Things are, in 
respect to their interdependent forms of activity, is framed 
after the analogy of this experience with the Self, even so is all 
human knowledge of the ends which things realize dependent 
upon the postulate of an analogy that arises in the same Self 
as its source. 

The critical doctrine of the immanency of final purpose in 
Nature belongs to Metaphysics and to the Philosophy of 
Religion rather than to Epistemology. The same doctrine 
belongs also among the discussions of the philosophy of con- 
duct and of the beautiful. The universal presence of the tele- 
ological idea in all branches of philosophy, silently awaiting 
either the scornful rejection, the uncritical reception, or the 
patient examination of every profoundly reflective thinker, is 
itself an instructive epistemological phenomenon. It proves 
that some kind of a teleology must form a fundamental part 
of every system of philosophy. How, indeed, could the fact be 
otherwise, since all knowledge involves the entire life of the 
Self ; and since each cognitive judgment about things known 
as not-selves ascribes to them some quality, or action, or 
relation which is derived, in accordance with a postulated 
analogy, from the depths of the Self ? 

But do the objects of human knowledge, in reality, exist 
and behave for the actualization of final purposes, as they 
undoubtedly seem to us to exist and to behave ? The fuller 
answer to this inquiry is not a problem for epistemology to 
undertake. Yet the critical doctrine of knowledge has already 
put before us certain truths that offer a partial answer, and 



496 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 

that suggest lines of thinking along which one may follow in 
the hope of attaining much toward the fuller answer. When 
the object of cognition is the Self as known by itself, there 
can be no doubt as to what the answer must be. I know that 
I am, in my real being, a living embodiment of the teleological 
principle ; and that it is actually the explanation of much 
which I do. This is only to say : I know that I am so consti- 
tuted as to set ends before me for realization ; and that much 
of my action, including my use of cognitive faculty, is, in fact, 
controlled by the principle of final purpose. 

But while proceeding along this line of inquiry for ends, as 
along that line which the principle of sufficient reason marks 
out, the mind comes upon not a few errors ; and 1 quickly 
reach the place where limits of nescience meet the eternal 
effort to get an answer to the question, " What for ? " as well 
as to the question, " Why ? " The outfit of human faculties, 
body and mind, roughly considered, may be brought under the 
teleological idea ; but to the finer and more complicated 
questionings after the supreme ends of human activity and 
human life, only answers that are either highly conjectural or 
obviously liable to large admixtures of error can, in general, 
be given. Even so, however, this case is scarcely more hazard- 
ous than is the case of those answers which physiological and 
psychological science gives to the inquiry after a causal ex- 
planation for the structure and functioning of the same 
faculties. Indeed, the causal explanation of all states of 
consciousness cannot be satisfactorily put forward without 
large recognition of the immanence of the idea of final pur- 
pose in the actual life of the Self. I know myself as actually 
adapted for, and striving after, certain ends; no class of 
judgments can be clearer or surer than such as affirm the 
knowledge of these ends. 

What is true of self-knowledge in this regard is also true 
of the knowledge of other selves. We know our fellow-men 
as objects in which the idea of final purpose is immanent, — 



THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 497 

necessary to explain to us their nature and their behavior. 
What is matter of envisagement on every man's part for him- 
self is matter of incontestable inference for the real being 
and actual transactions of other men. Indeed, without the 
growth of experience along the line of the teleological idea, 
all knowledge of human nature is impossible. All the sciences 
treat of man as a being capable of consciously adopting ends 
and of making them determinative of his actions in the pur- 
suit of these ends. What is called " practical acquaintance " 
with humanity, and the happy knack both of understanding 
others and of influencing them in conduct, consists largely in 
this very kind of cognition. Even to speak of having a sci- 
ence of man, in his complex relations to nature and to his 
fellows, that should be built up in complete disregard of the 
principle of final purpose, would be to utter a mockery. 

The higher species of the animals below man are also 
known as actually possessed by the principle of final purpose, 
and as acting and developing in certain ways rather than 
others, because they pursue ends that are set by some con- 
scious form of good. Only very recently has modern biology 
shown signs of a return to a larger sanity of mind in its atti- 
tude toward teleology. It may be — indeed, it seems to be 
the truth — that man alone is capable of setting before him- 
self the attainment of knowledge as something valuable for 
its own sake ; and a fortiori man alone can hold up in con- 
sciousness, and pursue in conduct, the ends set by the ethical, 
the sesthetical, or the religious ideals. Neither do the lower 
animals appear to have the mental equipment necessary for 
selecting eudasmonistic ends that are very complex and ele- 
vated, or that are realizable only in the distant future, and 
by the patient combination of complicated instrumentalities. 
Less evidence is there that any of these animals ever holds up 
in consciousness, as an end of effort, the realization of his 
selfhood in accordance with a consciously accepted ideal. 
Now this is precisely what every human being does who be- 

32 



498 THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 

comes developed into full ethical consciousness. All the 
animals of the higher species, however, — and, indeed, it is 
becoming increasingly difficult to say how low down this 
same observation may not extend, — are known obviously to 
acknowledge the presence of the idea of final purpose. Their 
real being and their actual transactions cannot be expressed 
without vindicating the applicability to them of the teleological 
principle. Indeed, some of the advanced seers of biology and 
of comparative zoology even dare to predict that whereas 
not long ago it was proposed to make psychology a branch of 
biology, and biology a branch of physico-chemical science, the 
next era will see biology itself treated largely as a species of 
psychology. 

He who can watch the embryonic development of any ani- 
mal without once thinking of change and growth in ac- 
cordance with immanent ideas, must have strange powers of 
thinking indeed. A critical metaphysics can show that no 
conception of any real thing, however mean in nature or 
strictly u material " in structure and behavior, can be framed 
without availing itself of the " immanent idea." But now let 
it simply be noted that the advancing knowledge of all beings 
which really live and actually grow, falls, of necessity, in 
large measure under the influence of the principle of final 
purpose. Every answer to the question, Why do the embry- 
onic changes occur in this rather than some other way ? — a 
proliferation of cells here, an aggregation of cells there, a 
wonderful differentiation of what hitherto appeared homo- 
geneous in one place, and in another a multiplication and 
massing of similar elements — must always appeal for help 
to teleology. The scanty knowledge gained by observation as 
to the efficient causes which control the development of a 
complex organism from an impregnated ovum does not relieve 
the mind from the necessity of considering the final causes 
of the same history of development. The truth is rather 
that increased complexity of the known efficient causes only 



THE TELEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 499 

emphasizes the need of an opportunity to regard them all in 
the light of the ends they appear to serve. 

One service to epistemology, as well as to the current 
theology, was done when the special and restricted applica- 
tion of the teleological principle to the more complex of the 
animal organisms was so vigorously contested. The necessity 
was emphasized of either applying the same principle to the 
entire world of objects, or of withdrawing it from this special 
and restricted sphere. On the one hand, this necessity sav- 
agely shook the confidence in our complete ability to define 
within any sphere all the ends which the mind is warranted 
in conceiving as immanent in the real being and actual trans- 
actions of things. It also compelled a confession that the 
bridge of the analogy on which we cross from our own limited 
and self-contained, most obvious final purposes to the tele- 
ology of all Reality, brings the inquiring mind into a region 
where something more than eyes trained to behold the nice- 
ties of mechanical adjustments are needed for vision of the 
whole truth. The voices that speak, not only of moral good- 
ness and of beauty, but, as well, of the awfully • dark and 
tragic side of Life, must now be heard. Looking and listen- 
ing may only carry our cognition up to the outer fringes of the 
all-comprehending truth. For this truth has to do with the 
all-inclusive and ultimate Reality. But, on the other hand, 
the same attack has led to a more cautious but vastly more 
comprehensive extension of the current teleology, and, under 
it, to at least half-truths, to valid intimations, and to reasoned 
faiths that strive to harmonize all the objects of our knowl- 
edge with the demands of the total Self. These objects thus 
become, not merely interconnected beings and transactions obe- 
dient to law in fact, but " moments " in the Life of a Being 
that is actually realizing its own immanent ideas. 



CHAPTER XVII 

ETHICAL AND ^STHETICAL "MOMENTA" OF KNOWLEDGE 

'THHAT the more subtle and profound truths require for 
-*- their apprehension and elaboration some special prepa- 
ration, is a statement which has often been rendered of 
practical effect. This statement is commonly thought to be 
especially applicable to truths of ethics, religion, and art; 
but it has been by no means confined to such truths. Cur- 
rent views as to the nature of this preparation of soul for a 
certain kind of commerce with Reality — if we may in a 
figurative way state a truth already discussed — have differed 
greatly. But in general the doctrine has been supported that 
the character of the preparation must bear some relation to the 
character of the truth which it is designed to gain. Thus, for 
example, in case the truth sought for belongs to the sphere 
of ethics, the preparation itself should be ethical. An ethico- 
religious attitude of mind and turn of development are then 
considered necessary for the apprehension, discourse, and 
application of the truths of religion. Again, philosophical 
problems can be comprehended as problems, and their ap- 
proximately satisfactory solution found, only by one who 
approaches them with a certain training and in an appropri- 
ate frame of mind. Did not Plato make Eros the sole guide 
to intercourse with the Ideas ? and did not the very word 
" philosophy " originate in the thought that its truths reveal 
themselves to those who seek them with a suitable affection ? 
Even in those pursuits of the physical and natural sciences 



ETHICAL AND AESTHETIC AL "MOMENTA" 501 

in which spiritual attitudes and conditions might properly be 
considered of least account, one hears much of the " scientific 
spirit," and of the " methods of research " which this spirit 
encourages and actually pursues. In some quarters it seems to 
be held that a certain peculiar mental fitness is essential for 
the observation of details of fact, as well as for the deepest 
insights, highest flights, and broadest surveys, of the larger 
work of science. Indeed, so much of late has this so-called 
" scientific spirit " been eulogized, and so diligently culti- 
vated or zealously assumed, that the very demand for it has 
frequently bred a display of narrowness, bitterness, and con- 
tempt toward certain most precious, if unscientific truths. 

In this same connection might be noticed the many positive 
errors and the failures to reach more than half-truth that are 
currently ascribed to a lack of fitness for some particular 
kind of cognitions. Indeed, some men are thought to have 
become so biased toward truth generally that, as the popular 
saying is, " They cannot see it if they want to ; " or, " They 
do not know it when they see it." On the other hand, all 
thoughtful critics praise a certain geniality of spirit, or hospi- 
tality of mind that keeps open house, and gives cordial wel- 
come to any kind of truth. When such authorities express 
themselves with severe caution about matters to which they 
have given attention, their opinions are more highly esteemed 
than are the most verbose demonstrations of their contem- 
poraries ; and when they say, " I know," even other experts 
of contradictory but well-considered opinions are brought to 
a respectful pause. Frequently, in the growth of the knowl- 
edge of the race, have a few veracious spirits reversed the 
judgment of the multitude. 

It is customary to account for such facts as the foregoing 
by simply pointing out the influence which human interests 
and emotions exert over the opinions of all men ; and, per- 
haps, also by recognizing the limitations which belong to the 
cognitive opportunities and attainments of the individual and 



502 ETHICAL AND ^ISTHETICAL "MOMENTA" 

of the race. When considering the sources of error, we took 
occasion to look upon the matter in this light. But there 
seem to be some much deeper truths here for the philosophy 
of knowledge to investigate. Epistemology we have con- 
sidered as a doctrine of truth implicating reality, rather than 
as a physiology and therapeutics of error and illusion ; and 
this doctrine does not permit that the verities of ethics, art, 
and religion should be looked upon merely as subjective beliefs 
or sentiments, after a criticism of cognitive faculty has re- 
sulted in confining all knowledge to phenomena of the senses. 
Neither does it permit the distinction between " Appearance 
and Reality ; " as though what men esteem to be knowledge 
were all illusory and, in essence, " infected " and " self-con- 
tradictory ; " while reality is apprehensible only by the fa- 
vored few, after it has been sublimated and idealized to the 
vanishing point, in a way of which no account can be given 
that is intelligible to either faith or understanding. On the 
contrary, we have been steadily winning our way to the posi- 
tion from which all cognition may possibly be regarded as a 
species of conduct ; and from which all cognitive judgment 
implies a correspondence of the being and activity of the Self 
with the being and transactions of Reality. We cannot stop 
or draw back from certain other suggestions and conclusions, 
just at this point. A few steps further on, and all the episte- 
mological problems which have been raised may be handed 
over to metaphysics, to ethics, to aesthetics, and to the phi- 
losophy of religion. 

In the formation and criticism of every alleged cognitive 
judgment, the entire mind of the subject, whose is the judg- 
ment, takes part. The knower is all in the knowledge ; and the 
cognitive judgment is, for the time being, an expression of his 
total selfhood. But this subject of knowledge, this knower to 
whom all the judgments belong, is a human being, developing 
to maturity in the possession and use of all the faculties of 
man. He is not merely a knower of truth, as logically deter- 



ETHICAL AND .ESTHETIC AL "MOMENTA" 503 

mined and presented, but also an ethical, sesthetical, and 
religious being. As is said, in the use of a familiar abstrac- 
tion, man has a moral, an artistic, and a religious, as well as 
an intellectual nature. But human nature is one ; and man 
could not be the subject of conduct, the creator and critic of 
the beautiful, the maker of, and believer in ; that Absolute 
whom " faith calls God " (or even, the " gods many and lords 
many "), were he not also an intellectual idealist and a meta- 
physician. An idealist and a metaphysician, in all his cogni- 
tions, man certainly is. How, then, can the reversal of this 
proposition, in some form, be escaped ? How can man know 
aught, without potent influences from his ethical, gesthetical, 
and religious nature ? Must it not be that all human knowl- 
edge will be suffused with influences from this complex ideal 
nature of man's ? In a brief consideration of the affirmative 
answer to these questions, the epistemological problem comes 
into connection with the general philosophy of the ideal. 

But we shall not catch the true import of the forego- 
ing inquiries, if the word " influence " be understood in too 
external a way. The different aspects or sides of human 
nature do not stand apart, as it were, from the ordinary work- 
ing of cognitive faculty ; although, undoubtedly, the effort is 
sometimes unfortunately made to treat them as though this 
were the case. The rather must they all be considered as 
factors, or " momenta," essentially present and effective in 
the integrating process that gives the object as a totality to 
the mind, and that shapes the actual synthesis in which the 
cognitive judgment consists. In a word, whatever be the 
object of cognition, — stone, tree, star, or fellow-man, — and 
whatever be the particular character of the truth concerned, — 
sensuous, scientific, practical, or so-called truth of morals, art, 
and religion, — all the cognitive " influences " may be expected 
to be at their work. Indeed, the very effort to disregard or to 
dispel any of them can only end by introducing them in some 
other form. It is not, as Kant held, by an illusory logic which 



504 ETHICAL AND ESTHETIC AL " MOMENTA " 

leads out from the known, along an endless chain of condi- 
tions, in search of the unconditioned, that ethical and sestheti- 
cal feelings and ideals influence the structure of the cognitive 
judgments of man; but it is rather as motifs, suggestions, 
insights, and beliefs, without which men do not, in fact, come 
to cognition at all. 

The presence and efficiency of ethical and sesthetical (we 
shall no longer speak of the religious as distinct) " mo- 
menta " in man's knowledge of things may best be illustrated 
by appeal to certain indefinite and broad areas of fact. The 
vague and shifty nature of this influence is necessarily con- 
nected with the truth that the concrete facts and judgments 
which express our ethical and aesthetical ideals are so little 
fixed or clear. The philosophy of conduct and of the beauti- 
ful is a reflective treatment of these facts and judgments to 
determine the origin, nature, and validity in reality, of their 
respective ideals. Ethics deals with the ideal of conduct, with 
that which " ought to be " in human character and behavior ; 
aesthetics deals with the ideal of the beautiful, with that which 
" would be," in case aesthetical feeling were completely to be 
satisfied. But conduct is a fact, and is always based upon an 
indefinite number of considerations that concern matters of 
fact ; and the beautiful object, whether in nature or in art, is 
itself a concrete matter-of-fact. Ethical and assthetical judg- 
ments are also always psychic facts; as judgments they 
involve and employ the same cognitive faculties which all 
judgments involve and employ. So, then, the real things and 
actual events to which ethical and sesthetical ideals are 
applied are the same things and the same events as those 
known by common perception, scientific reasoning, or philo- 
sophical reflection. 

Now, however, a most significant class of experiences may 
be recalled for criticism from this point of view. In his cog- 
nitions man is not satisfied to consider things as mere exis- 
tences in fact, or their transactions as mere occurrences in 



ETHICAL AND ^ESTHETICAL "MOMENTA" 505 

fact. He construes things as though they were in some sort 
capable, like himself, of conduct ; and he pronounces judg- 
ment about their transactions as though these were a species 
of conduct. Or, to say a similar thing in another way, we all 
naturally tend to perceive in things and in their behavior 
those qualities which would be there if things really were 
themselves subjects regardful of ethical and gesthetical ideals. 
What are the " real " things ? Are they the things of every 
man's familiar daily environment and customary possession 
and use ; or the things of his more elaborate scientific knowl- 
edge ; or the same things as they appear from the highest 
reflective points of view ? From whichever of these stand- 
points one chooses to regard them, one prefers to know them 
as something more than matter-of-fact existences ; and as 
responding more or less perfectly to the standards of ethical 
and sesthetical ideals. Man cannot readily cognize things 
otherwise than as somehow responsible to his own ideals. 

This virtual personification of things, which goes so far as to 
attribute to them not only life and intelligence, but also quasi- 
morally good or bad behavior, and beauty or ugliness in them- 
selves, has frequently been explained on purely psychological 
grounds. To it, as thus explained, the origin of some, or per- 
haps of all the forms of religion has been ascribed ; and with 
a certain degree of historical correctness, if only the terms 
employed are properly selected and correctly understood. 
But, as a rule, it is now held that all such anthropomor- 
phism is the peculiarity of childish, or savage, undeveloped 
minds, and is destined to retreat and disappear before the more 
scientific and verifiable knowledge of what things really are. 
It is not our present interest to determine precisely what are 
the limits which truth and reality put upon this psychological 
tendency to personify things. The fact to be noted which has 
a profound epistemological significance is this : the banishing 
of superstition and the growth of physical science have not 
essentially changed the fundamental tendencies or the actual 



506 ETHICAL AND ^STHETICAL "MOMENTA" 

operations of human cognitive faculty. Things continue to 
be known only under a potent determination to make them 
conform to certain ideals. The ethical and the aesthetical 
" momenta," however diminished in naivete and obtrusiveness, 
are not less truly present in almost all classes of the so-called 
cognitive judgments of mankind. 

The necessity for regarding the being and action of things 
from certain quasi, if not completely, ethical and aesthetical 
standpoints, and for affirming ethical and aesthetical qualifica- 
tions of them, follows as a corollary, in some sort, from the 
argument of the last chapter. In this chapter it was shown 
that the application of the teleological idea is almost, if not 
quite, coextensive with cognition itself. But the essence of 
ethics and of aesthetics is teleological. The former is indeed 
the study of conduct as related to a consciously accepted ideal. 
And doubtless it is the recognition of this limit — " consciously 
accepted " — which, in large measure, accounts for the common 
readiness of even the most cultivated minds to consider the 
things and events of the physical world as really coming under 
the category of the aesthetically beautiful rather than under the 
category of the morally good. On the other hand, there can be 
little doubt that the very conception of final purpose, even when 
it is rendered as negative as possible by abstraction of all 
thought from a consciousness which accepts the end and ren- 
ders effective the adaptation of the means to its actual realiza- 
tion, leads the mind to ways of perception and of thought that 
are scarcely separable from the distinctively ethical and aesthet- 
ical. We prefer, however, to illustrate the propositions of this 
chapter, in as great independence as is possible of the cognate 
truth that all knowledge is teleological. 

The character of the feeling with which men instinctively 
regard those events of nature which affect their interests most 
immediately is instructive on this point. It is not the super- 
stitious savage, or the pious civilized farmer alone who when 
these events, for example, result in the destruction of his dwell- 



ETHICAL AND ^STHETICAL "MOMENTA" 507 

ing, his herds, or his crops, summons them to the bar of reason 
to stand judgment pronounced on ethical grounds. The sen- 
timent of a grievance that is something more than grief, of a 
wrong received that needs to be righted in some other than a 
blind and mechanical fashion, is not only native but also well- 
nigh ineradicable with man under such circumstances. He is 
scarcely free to choose between an outbreaking and a deeper, 
suppressed resentment that is equally unintelligible ; he must 
rather choose between some feeling of resentment and the 
conquest of that feeling by the sentiment of resignation. But 
neither resentment nor resignation would appear to be a 
proper attitude of mind toward any mere matter-of-fact. It is 
so ; that is the only judgment appropriate to be pronounced 
with a complete freedom from ethical feeling. Pain and 
sorrow are the feelings which recognize such mere matters- 
of-fact for all that they are worth. As to meaning, or worth 
beyond, how can one think or speak ? In vain, however, does 
Epicurus scoff at the thought that the gods concern them- 
selves in things like these. In vain does the fatalistic poet 
bid us lift not our hands to Heaven, — 

" for It 
As impotently rolls as you or I." 

And it is not the atheist, if such there really be, who is least 
likely to shake an imprecatory fist toward the stars, when the 
fateful lightning or flood has singled him from among his 
fellows for its work of destruction. On the other hand, is he 
the wiser man who succeeds in suppressing all movements of 
a genial and grateful spirit toward the " good dame Nature " 
when her hand has just been extraordinarily bountiful to him ? 
Or is it altogether evident that the judgment which virtually 
affirms the event to be an act of goodness on her part is 
squarely contradictory of the most recent physico-chemical 
explanations of the same event? 

To consider an example : What used to be called " natural 
theology " has no harder task at present than the reconcilia- 



508 ETHICAL AND ESTHETIC AL "MOMENTA" 

tion of the facts of modern bacteriology with its traditional 
doctrine of the goodness of God. Or, to change the point of 
view to the more scientific and philosophical, What shall 
one say in answer to the problem afforded by the attempt to 
give a meaning to such facts as observation reveals ? Innu- 
merable species of animal and plant life — microscopic, in- 
conceivably prolific, exceedingly obscure as to their habitat 
and their modes of propagation and of procedure, inescap- 
able — fill the air, the water, the soil, and support their 
life upon the elements of every organic structure belonging 
to the physical life of man. Of what worth are they ; and 
how can their existence be justified in the great scheme of 
natural forces and laws ? But such a question as this shows 
the inevitable influences upon man's way of viewing natural 
things and events that have their origin in the ethical and 
aesthetical points of view. For if bacteria are to be looked 
upon as mere matters-of-fact, we cannot ask to have a ques- 
tion of value concerning them solved so as to seem to justify 
their existence. As to " rights " of existence, there is, in 
fact, no possible question to be raised. These things exist ; 
and they deal disease and death to man ; and there ends his 
cognitive judgments regarding them. 

But now we are compelled to recognize another fact of ex- 
perience, and this is the pleasure with which the announcement 
is made and heard, that harmless bacteria are much more abun- 
dant than are the deadly kinds. Nay, more and better news is 
brought to us from the researches of field and of laboratory. 
These minute beings are the makers of valuable ferments, and 
the causes of agreeable and wholesome flavors. We are even 
assured that without the silent, unobserved services, through 
untold centuries and in absolutely inconceivable numbers, of 
such lowly forms of life, the higher forms, whose crown is 
found in man, could never have come into existence. The mind 
has now something more than a mere increase of informa- 
tion on matters-of-fact. It experiences a significant satisfac- 



ETHICAL AND ^STHETICAL "MOMENTA" 509 

tion of its demand that Nature shall reveal herself to it as 
not all bad, or " half bad," but as capable of a deeper wisdom 
and a more profound beneficence, it is likely, than that which 
is apparent upon the surface of things. Be the argument 
valid or not, this does not signify much when one contem- 
plates it from the present point of view. For we are trying 
to understand the nature of knowledge itself ; and such facts 
of human experience lead us in a new way to see how deep- 
set in the activity of the mind is its tendency to regard things 
as somehow responsible beings, and their doings as though 
they were a species of conduct that might properly be re- 
garded from ethical and aesthetieal points of view. 

Undoubtedly, the influence of ethical feeling and ideas 
upon the cognitive judgments of men, as applied to the being 
and transactions of things, is much more obvious when they 
are dealing with Nature "in the large," as it were. Her 
general forces, and the important events they produce within 
the sphere of human living, seem more properly to be held re- 
sponsible for some kind of conformity or subservience to 
ethical ideals. Thus it is not in poetry alone, or by senti- 
mentalists merely, that " She " is virtually pronounced re- 
morseless and cruel, or bountiful and beneficent, according 
to the varying relations which physical objects and forces 
sustain to human interests and to human endeavors. Per- 
haps it would not much exaggerate the case to say that 
modern science, with its large extension of the principle of 
mechanism, has nevertheless been scarcely less anxious to 
justify the ways of Nature before quasi-ethical consciousness 
than was formerly the theologian to obtain for Divine Provi- 
dence a similar fair reputation. But so far as the theory of 
knowledge is concerned, what difference does it make whether 
it is a theodicy or a " physiodicy " (if such a word may be 
coined) that is secretly had in mind, when natural events are 
brought to judgment? If we cannot avoid detecting a ten- 
dency to judge the system of natural objects and events as 



510 ETHICAL AND ^STHETICAL "MOMENTA" 

though it were arranged so as to make its messengers out of 
the wind, and its ministers out of flames of fire, in order to 
control the weal or the woe of man, the selection of a word to 
spell with a capital, as the Power effecting such arrangement, 
does not signify an essential difference for our epistemologi- 
cal doctrine. For the present, let It be called Nature, the 
Absolute, or God. 

The reasons why men generally feel more hesitancy 
about attributing ethical qualifications to single natural ob- 
jects or to events that seem trifling, are not difficult to dis- 
cover. It is only that action which appears to have a meaning 
when contemplated in the light of certain primitive and 
unique forms of feeling, to which ethical judgment applies. 
Conduct, and not mere action, is felt and declared to be right 
or wrong, worthy of approbation and meritorious, or the op- 
posite. Things, therefore, when regarded merely as having 
qualities or forms of being, and not as doing anything to 
man, are not entitled to judgment under any of the ethical 
categories. Moreover, when men become acquainted with 
things in action, and even as doing that which most seriously 
affects human well-being, the things appear for the most 
part as the helpless instruments of forces that lie outside of 
themselves and which they cannot oppose, but must perforce 
obey. Even the most ignorant savage does not charge to 
the account of the poisoned arrow from the bow of his enemy 
his own approaching death, in a quasi-ethical way ; but 
the destruction wrought by the bolt that falls from heaven 
impresses him as a quite different species of action. Even 
the most enlightened modern believer in Providence thinks of 
the cyclone itself as standing in a different relation to God 
from that sustained by the particular brick or beam which 
has been " driven by " the cyclone upon the head of some 
member of his family. 

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that what have 
been referred to as " ethical momenta " in the cognitive pro- 



ETHICAL AND ^ESTIIETICAL "MOMENTA" 511 

cesses of man's mind, have no modifying influence upon the 
cognitive judgments that apply to particular and even minute 
things. The presence of this same influence, for example, 
is powerfully felt whenever the question arises as to the 
matter-of-fact origin, nature, and functions of some member 
of any complex organism. The difficulty which the mind 
finds in accepting the suggestion, or even the seemingly well- 
founded conclusion, that any member of such an organism 
has no function, or that its function is not beneficent with 
reference to the total organism, does not seem to be wholly 
a deduction from our scientific knowledge as to the nature 
and conditions of life in general ; it is rather a quasi-ethical 
and sesthetical postulate. The feelings of satisfaction with 
which observers contemplate the services of the cilia in keep- 
ing clear the respiratory passages, or of the saliva and the 
gastric juices in rendering poisonous substances innocuous, 
or of the phagocytes in actually surrounding and counteract- 
ing foreign and deadly germs in the circulation, are not 
wholly born of the logical faculties. He who refrains from 
adding to the cognitive judgments which affirm, " That is 
what they are," and " That is how they behave," the other 
judgments, " That is what they are for," and " Bravo ! " or 
" Well done ! " suppresses a tendency of his own nature which 
is as deeply seated and as sure to demand its satisfactions as 
is the desire for knowledge of fact and of law. It belongs, how- 
ever, to the metaphysics of ethics and to the philosophy of 
religion to consider the more comprehensive and profound 
problems as to the nature of Reality which are suggested by 
the influence of man's moral feeling and ethical ideas over his 
cognitive judgments. Our analysis thus far has shown that 
this influence is rather a tendency than a compulsion. It has 
also partially evinced the truth that in order to render this 
tendency satisfactory to the cognitive faculties as a whole, 
the conception of that Reality whose being and transactions 
these faculties aim truthfully to represent must itself be sub- 



512 ETHICAL AND ESTHETIC AL "MOMENTA" 

ject to expansion, to purification, and to progressive elevation 
in the direction of the supreme Ideals of man. 

^Esthetical consciousness differs from ethical conscious- 
ness in some important particulars. The influence which the 
former exerts upon our cognitive judgments, and the class of 
cognitions in which this influence terminates, are correspond- 
ingly different. It is conduct that moral feeling approbates 
or blames ; but aesthetical feeling leads the mind to judge 
beautiful (or the opposite) both the quiescent being, or " still 
life," and also the behavior and interaction of things. Whether 
that which does not at least suggest some form of Life in 
action can awaken aesthetical feeling, and be pronounced beau- 
tiful, need not be discussed in this connection. But we may 
certainly say of some things, considered as removed from causal 
connection with other things, and as not affecting our personal 
interests, " They are (or are not) beautiful." Schopenhauer, 1 
in a highly exaggerated and largely erroneous but effective 
way, has described at length the nature of the aesthetical 
judgment. It may be pronounced as the conclusion of a pro- 
cess of perception ; and it has the objectivity and universality 
of a cognitive judgment. I know the object as beautiful, with 
as much appearance of immediateness and indubitableness as 
I know it to have certain spatial or other qualifications. Un- 
doubtedly even aesthetical judgment is, quoad judgment, sub- 
jective ; but so is every form of a cognitive judgment. It is 
suffused with a peculiar form of feeling ; and when the effort 
is made to trace its origin, this effort would seem to end 
in merely recognizing the justification which the feeling itself 
^supplies. That is, the ultimate grounds on which aesthetical 
judgments appear to repose for their validity are to be found 
in the aesthetical feelings awakened in us by certain classes of 
objects. But, on the other hand, the feelings themselves have 
just this peculiarity, that they seem to us to warrant, and even 
to compel, a judgment that is not subjective. The aesthetical 

1 World as Will and Idea (English translation), i., pp. 219 f., and iii., pp. 173 f. 



ETHICAL AND ^ESTHETICAL "MOMENTA" 513 

judgment does not simply declare, "I feel certain peculiar 
affective changes in my consciousness ; " but " The Thing 
over there is (or is not) a beautiful tiling." ^Esthetics is 
the branch of philosophy which critically examines the origin 
and nature of this class of judgments, and the peculiar feelings 
which the judgments manifest ; its metaphysical problem 
concerns the nature of Reality as known in this way. Epis- 
temology, however, cannot avoid noting the significant exist- 
ence of the entire class of such judgments. That men's 
contemplative perception of things results in ascribing assthet- 
ical qualifications to things, in the form of the most confident 
cognitive judgments, is an important fact for epistemology and 
its correlative view of Reality ; and that men do make such 
judgments — confident, objective, and liable to be employed 
both as points of starting and as goals to be reached by 
endeavor — does not admit of doubt. 

It is commonly supposed that the body of cognitions which 
science and philosophy support is uninfluenced by sesthetical 
considerations ; that its so-called truths are solely matters of 
observed fact and of conclusions arrived at by following 
strictly logical processes. We do not believe, however, that 
the case is so. The body of scientific truth is a constitution 
in which considerations of order, harmony, symmetry, and 
adaptability are supremely significant; and philosophy finds 
its very life and its ultimate justification in the reflective 
treatment of ideals. Now, the conceptions of order, harmony, 
symmetry, and adaptability, and the nature of any ideal, are 
themselves such as to awaken strong gesthetical feelings ; and 
these feelings can by no possibility be wholly kept apart from 
those observations and from that work of generalizing in which 
the so-called laws of science and the speculative solution of 
the problems of philosophy have their rise. The student of 
physical science, as a rule, does not understand himself, how- 
ever expert he may become in the understanding of nature. 
As an gesthetical being, he loves and admires order, harmony, 

33 



514 ETHICAL AND iESTHETICAL " MOMENTA " 

symmetry, and adaptability ; as an assthetical being, and not 
as a purely logical being, he also finds in nature what he loves 
and admires. The whole history of the physical and natural 
sciences would on examination be found replete with examples 
to illustrate this truth : the scientifically ideal and the cestheti- 
cal qualifications of nature always have the presumption on 
their side. Order rather than disorder, some sort of harmony 
and symmetry — which may be all the more beautiful and 
significant if the less obvious, superficial, and easy to be 
found — rather than the opposites of these, are the assumed 
ends and ideals of the system of physical beings and events 
which physical science proclaims. It confidently relies on 
finding these ends and ideals realized in nature ; but the 
warrant for this confidence does not exist solely in the state 
of the case as bare matter-of-fact. 

For an illustration we may turn to modern astronomy : By 
far the greater majority of the stellar universe, so far as this 
science has any information from observed facts, are behaving 
in the most disorderly, unharmonious, and meaningless fashion. 
Millions of masses of matter, void of any life that could follow 
a pattern known to us, are rushing through space in all direc- 
tions and with an indefinite number of velocities, paying no 
attention to each other, and seeking no end, — doing nothing 
in fact that has conceivable significance or use. Yet the 
steadfast faith of the astronomer proclaims the order and har- 
mony of the stars ; and his soul kindles with a feeling of the 
sublimity and beauty of the celestial scenery as he applies his 
trained eye to telescope or heliometer. Is the proclamation 
based merely on inference from the facts ? Do the feelings 
arise at the call simply of a cogent logic ? We do not believe 
that either of these questions can be answered affirmatively. 
Or again : There is current just now a highly elaborate and 
largely metaphysical doctrine of evolution as applied to the 
known facts of biology. This doctrine is exceedingly optimis- 
tic in its view of the significance, the tendencies, and the issue 



ETHICAL AND ^ESTHETICAL "MOMENTA" 515 

to be expected from the facts. That which is better is, on the 
whole, winning the day ; the way is long and weary indeed, 
and it is well strewn with slime and blood. But the end is to 
justify the way. And the same Nature which appears relent- 
less, cruel, and hideous in certain aspects of the descriptive 
history of animal life, is, after all, believed to be striving to- 
ward a goal that has an ideal value sufficient to pay all the 
costs and more of the passage. Now, on what basis is this so 
optimistic theory of evolution actually placed ? Is this basis 
simply what is known of observed facts, and what may be 
concluded by fair but strict logical inference from observed 
facts ? Or is not every form of the evolution theory, so far as 
it is pronouncedly optimistic, largely derived from aBsthetical 
demands which arise in the nature of biologists themselves ? 
What kind of theoretic handling these same facts and laws 
admit of, if treated in their relations to our human conceptions 
of a good to be realized, becomes apparent when the decidedly 
pessimistic temperament takes them in hand. The optimist 
is ready to ascribe the pessimist's conclusions in such a case 
to the temperament of the investigator. Doubtless the charge 
is largely just. But the very point at issue is whether the 
prevailing optimistic conclusions are not themselves largely 
a matter of "temperament," or rather whether they do not 
need for their full explanation the admission that sesthetical 
influences enter into the cognitive judgments of the natural 
sciences in a very prevalent and pervasive way. 

If science seems always impelled to give more or less of an 
ideal construction to the facts of the physical world, philos- 
ophy is from its very nature definitively and consciously an 
effort to harmonize all human experience in terms of the 
ideal. It starts indeed from matters-of-fact, — from what is, 
and is known to be. But, inasmuch as philosophy begins 
at once to inquire after the meaning and the larger and 
more intimate and ultimate relations of what is, it early de- 
fines its object of pursuit as belonging to the World of the 



516 ETHICAL AND ^STHETICAL "MOMENTA" 

Idea. As every student of its history knows, its most seduc- 
tive temptation — indeed, the temptation to which all the 
greatest speculative thinkers have probably in some measure 
yielded, so much as to sway them from the truth — is to force 
the facts which experience presents and guarantees as facts, 
whether of cognition or of existence, into conformity with 
aesthetical ideals. Philosophy indeed grows quite as much out 
of the gesthetical as out of the more purely intellectual nature 
of man. This is to the discredit neither of its truthfulness 
nor of its value. For truth discovers itself to the aesthetical 
nature ; and man does not live by bread alone. 

Perhaps no more impressive illustration of the extent to 
which the influence of aesthetical considerations can be carried 
in the treatment of a philosophical problem can be found than 
that afforded by the " Critique of Pure Reason " itself. This 
illustration is all the more impressive on account of two con- 
siderations : For, first, the problem itself is of a character 
which does not take the critic far afield into tangled thickets 
of obscure and contested facts, or out upon the foggy and 
limitless ocean of ontological mysteries ; it only involves the 
analysis of processes of cognition with a view to determine 
their laws and formal, subjective characteristics. All tempta- 
tion to mysticism would seem to be removed on Kant's part 
by his restricting the problem to the legal and formal aspect 
of knowledge ; since it is in the ^raws-subjective and ontologi- 
cal aspect of the same problem, in the origin and nature of 
" that which is given," that the realm of mystery chiefly 
seems to lie. 

But, second, no critic could easily affect a method and a 
style more high-and-dry in its claims to apodictic certainty on 
grounds of its strictly logical and unemotional procedure than 
that of the author of the " Critique of Pure Reason " in this 
particular work. Rarely during its several hundred pages 
does a sentence glow with the heat of even suppressed ethical 
and assthetical emotion. Kant appears determined to use the 



ETHICAL AND AESTHETIC AL "MOMENTA" 517 

dissecting-knife upon the whole body of human knowledge, to 
let out its life-blood before our eyes, and to display its skeleton 
bared of all fair clothing of sensitive flesh ; but he will do this 
grimly, and as a matter of devotion to mere truth, without 
influence from sesthetical considerations. He will not once 
let his eye pity, or his arm stretch out to save. In the text of 
the body of his critical work it is only occasionally (for the 
most part in the second edition) that he reminds us of his 
ulterior design to " make room " for faith ; occasionally indeed 
he does appear to drop a sentence or two which shows the 
"state of his heart" toward the problems of God, Freedom, 
and Immortality. Yet the final outcome of the Kantian criti- 
cal thinking does not disprove the saying, " Das Pathos ist 
der Grundton des ganzen Daseins — des Weltalls." Even in 
its more purely destructive work, and in spite of Kant's own 
warning against letting desire and imagination run away with 
his logic (lest he might himself become a Vernunftkilnstler'), 
he could not keep his own skirts clear of blame. 

We believe it can be shown that the entire architectonic of 
the " Critique of Pure Reason," as well as the subordinate 
divisions and conclusions which are ranged under the main 
titles, is much influenced by its author's assthetieal ideals. It 
embodies preconceived views as to what sort of an harmonious 
and symmetrical structure human reason ought to be, quite as 
much as the actual finding, in the name of either sound psy- 
chology or valid epistemological analysis, of what human 
reason is. The reader who understands may note everywhere 
the stupendous products of Kant's fondness for effective 
parallel and contrast, and of his confidence in his ability to 
embody his own ideal of a Reason that should be equipped 
with a perfectly symmetrical and harmonious outfit of original 
faculties. The picture which he draws of such a system of 
faculties cannot be recognized as coinciding throughout, or even 
in many most important particulars, with the reason actually 
possessed and used by the race of living men. Thus the im- 



518 ETHICAL AND ^STHETICAL "MOMENTA" 

pression made by a careful study of this picture corresponds 
to that produced by an aesthetically great creative composi- 
tion, rather than to that of a portrait true to life. Yery 
few are the students of the "Critique of Pure Reason" 
who finish it with the feeling of conviction, " I have seen 
my own face as in a glass," rather than with a feeling of 
admiration and wonder at its author's art in dramatizing 
human nature in such a lofty and interesting though unreal 
way. A reason actually constructed after the pattern of 
Kant's architectonic would surely be a most marvellous 
piece of mechanism ; and since everything necessary to cogni- 
tion is strictly determined a priori by this pattern (with 
the insignificant exception of what is given as content of 
sensation), we may ask : How could such a reason fall 
into any erroneous judgments ? But, on the other hand, 
how could it attain to any truth, in the meaning of that 
word which interests the hearts and binds the consciences 
of all men ? For whatever may be the last word of criti- 
cism, the hearts and consciences of men revolt against the 
conclusions of a sceptical idealism ; and finally, the question 
arises whether, in the critical endeavor to clear away all 
mystery from the primary fact of knowledge by an analysis 
of intellectual faculty, the critic is not bound to pay tribute 
to his own assthetical and ethical tendencies in another and 
no less uncritical way. 

For the fundamental epistemological truth seems to be that 
the rational order of cognition proceeds from the concept of 
Self, with its numerous ethical and cesthetical impressions 
and ideas, to the more barren and less certainly valid concept 
of a Nature stripped of such impressions and ideas. But the 
latter concept, instead of being valid for Reality, because built 
upon verifiable facts that can stand apart from the conception 
of a conscious Self, and so account for the latter by a process 
of aggregation or development, is itself derived from the latter 
by a process of abstraction and progressive separation of dif- 



ETHICAL AND iESTHETICAL "MOMENTA" 519 

ferent, seemingly separable " momenta." * At any rate we saw 
that this form of procedure takes place in all that application 
of the principle of sufficient reason to the world of things which 
the development of the physical sciences requires. Nor is it 
strange that the spirit of man, in spite of all warnings to the 
contrary, and notwithstanding a never-ceasing series of mis- 
apprehensions and errors brought about in this way, persists 
in regarding the cosmic mechanism as the mask or hull 
behind and underneath which spiritual processes are working. 
Whatever term be employed, — whether it be the term 
"Nature" as used by the physicist, the "Absolute" of the 
philosopher, or the " God " of the theologian and the religious 
devotee, — ethical and aesthetical feelings and ideals will make 
themselves manifest in the final construction which human 
thought gives to Reality. And, indeed, the " momenta " of 
this character which enter into the very essence of our cog- 
nitive judgments are such and so many that it is doubtful 
whether they can be removed, and leave to those judgments 
the semblance of being the product of human cognitive facul- 
ties. Man's own life of final purpose, of conduct directed 
with reference to a consciously accepted ideal, and of admir- 
ing satisfaction in what appears to him under the conceptions 
of order, harmony, symmetry, etc., suffuses his judgments as 
to the being and transactions of the really existent World. 
He knows that he himself is actually influenced by ideals of 
conduct and of beauty; he is constantly inclined, and even im- 
pelled, to know things as though they too were influenced in 
an analogous way. In a word, the Universe is known, so far 
as known at all, rather as an Idea that seems to give true 
answers, though meagre, obscure, and mysterious in their 
deepest meanings, to the whole soul of man. And indeed, if 
the highest knowledge is a kind of commerce of Spirit with 
our spirits, how otherwise should the fact rightly seem to be ? 

1 Compare the remarks of Wundt on u Die Natur als Vorstufe des Geistes," 
in his " System der Philosophic," p. 559. 



520 ETHICAL AND ^STHETICAL "MOMENTA" 

But now the question arises as to the truthfulness of those 
forms of mental representation that stand under the influence 
of sesthetical and ethical considerations, and of the cogni- 
tive judgments into which aesthetical and ethical " momenta " 
most abundantly enter. According to the conception of truth 
which our critical theory of knowledge has compelled us to 
hold, the answer to this question leads on to the affirmation or 
denial of an aesthetical and ethical being for Reality itself. 
But how illusory does the search for the truth along such 
lines of thinking seem to many minds ? To be sure, many 
men, and even — it must be admitted — men generally, seem 
to themselves to know that real things are beautiful or ugly ; 
and that they do behave in admirable and commendable, or in 
morally dubious and even detestable, ways. But among all 
the seeming possessions of the human mind, in its growing 
mastery of the real being and actual transactions of things, 
no others are so fickle, evanescent, and easily controverted 
as are such judgments as these. Is not the sphere of ethics, 
then, strictly limited to the actions of men, when those 
actions are directed toward the realization of ends which they 
themselves hold in consciousness ? And, on the contrary, 
what more obviously imaginative and emotional, instead of 
strictly cognitive, than the impressions and opinions of men 
about the beauty of different natural objects ; or even about 
those artistic products which they know to be consciously 
constructed in the effort to realize some particular person's 
conception of what is beautiful ? Surely anthropomorphic 
and anthropopathic tendencies derived from excesses of emo- 
tion and imagination should be checked by the stern hand of 
reason when they propose to construct Reality after a pattern 
suitable to their mind. At this point we have surely come to 
the limits of affirmation in the light of a critical epistemology. 

Now the sincerity and forcefulness of such protests as the 
foregoing must be cheerfully conceded. Human knowledge 
of real things and of their actual transactions, as properly 



ETHICAL AND .ESTHETIC AL " MOMENTA " 521 

falling under ethical and aesthetical ideals, — if, indeed, one 
may speak of " knowledge " here, — - is certainly of a some- 
what different order, and appears to repose on different 
grounds from the order and the grounds with which the 
analysis of the primary cognitive judgment has made us 
familiar. That this is so, the language and the action of men 
render obvious enough. For men are usually willing to say, 
" It seems to me so," or " Such is my opinion," rather than 
" I know," whenever their first unqualified affirmations of an 
sesthetical order are called in question. Two observers, stand- 
ing before a scene in nature, or a work of art, would discuss 
the question of its sesthetical character in a quite different 
manner from that which they would inevitably follow, should 
one of the two deny the existence, in reality, of the object 
under discussion. And although there is nothing about which 
contention may become more earnest than about the ethics 
of the Divine dealings with man, it is only necessary to bring 
the contention to those tests of truth which are ordinarily 
offered either by logical praxis or by epistemological theory, in 
order to make clear certain characteristic weaknesses in the 
grounds on which such contesting arguments repose. More- 
over, the study of the history of opinion shows that what 
seems to one man proof of the ethically and aesthetically 
Divine appears to another no better than sure marks of the 
controlling power of a wholly bad and ugly Devil. Ormuzd 
and Ahriman both appear to have their eternal and unshak- 
able thrones in the deepest recesses of Reality, if once we 
begin to admit that Reality is known at all as coming under 
ethical and assthetical ideals. 

All such considerations, however, and any others which can 
be adduced, do not overthrow or modify the integrity of the 
position to which we have been forced by taking the point of 
view of a critical epistemology. And some of the consid- 
erations usually considered adverse have no bearing on the 
problem as raised from the purely epistemological point of 



522 ETHICAL AND iESTHETICAL -MOMENTA" 

view. Whether Reality is a mixture of the ethically and 
aesthetically good with the ethically and aesthetically bad ; or 
whether it is all good or all as bad as is compatible with the 
conditions of existence ; or, finally, whether it is only a pro- 
cess, in which the good and bad are contesting the place of 
supremacy, with the end held responsible for the justification 
of the process, — these are problems for the metaphysics of 
ethics and of aesthetics, and for the philosophy of religion, to 
answer. Perhaps human reason can find no satisfactory 
answer to these questions. But even if it cannot, the facts 
which affect the epistemological problem remain the same. 
The continued influence of ethical and aesthetical considera- 
tions upon human knowledge as to the Nature of the really 
Existent is a matter of fact. Ethical and aesthetical " mo- 
menta " are found actually to enter into the very structure of 
large numbers of what seem to the minds of men generally as 
true cognitive judgments. We are, therefore, not prepared 
to deny all value, for cognition, to these influences and to 
this class of " momenta." If the ethical and aesthetical 
nature of man urges him on to know the real being and actual 
transactions of things, in the light of their meaning, and with 
reference to certain ideas that have for his soul an incom- 
parable worth, epistemological theory cannot readily admit 
that this urgency leads only to error and illusion. For there 
is at least the possibility of another view. Things may really 
have a meaning : the Reality may itself be the actual Ground 
and real antitype of these very ideals. If so, the one fatal 
and unpardonable error, the crime against the Spirit of 
Truth that cannot be forgiven, is the refusal to make one's 
subjective ideals conform to their antitype in Reality. By a 
legitimate hypothesis, the large truthfulness of the judgments 
which men frame under these influences may be vindicated ; 
and the limitations and errors which belong to these judg- 
ments may be satisfactorily explained. 

It has been the almost universal opinion that the great 



ETHICAL AND iESTHETICAL "MOMENTA" 523 

artists and the prophetic minds of the race are discoverers 
and teachers of important truth. This opinion implies that 
ethical and sesthetical insight, and constructive imagination 
and thought founded upon such insight, give to the mind 
something that it may trust regarding the real being and 
actual transactions of things. We share in this opinion. 
We, too, refuse to believe that truth is attained or demon- 
strated as a purely logical affair. In the ethical sphere, in- 
spiration and revelation are not to be regarded as extraneous 
to universal human experience, or as contradicting its funda- 
mental convictions and ordinary modes of construction and 
development. The rather is the belief in inspiration and 
revelation founded upon facts which are integral and perma- 
nent factors in human experience. The aesthetical feelings 
and their resulting judgments, as they have found expression 
in works of art, cannot be denied participation in the con- 
stitution and growth of that entire body of truth which rep- 
resents the sum-total of the achievements of human cognitive 
faculty. Who will for a moment suppose that if we could 
take from men the conceptions and opinions they either 
incline toward, or more definitely frame, under influence 
from ethical and aesthetical considerations, we should thus 
increase or improve their knowledge of " the truth of things " ? 
Truths of conduct and of life — the best attainable answers 
to the questions, " What ought I to do ? " and " What may I 
hope ? " — are undoubtedly the peculiar sphere within which 
moral and artistic insight is most effective and trustworthy. 
But one should never try, as did Kant, wholly to separate 
these questions from that question which he called " purely 
speculative ; " from the question, namely, " What can I 
know?" Reason, in its practical and artistic employment, 
does not comprise another and somewhat distinct set of 
faculties. What I should do, and what I may hope, are 
dependent upon what I can know. And what I do know, 
or assume with an irresistible intensity of conviction that I 



524 ETHICAL AND ^STHETICAL " MOMENTA" 

know, is, in turn, dependent upon what I believe should be 
done and may be hoped. 

For human reason is not a compound of loosely related 
faculties, — with an a priori outfit of rules designed for things, 
of intellectual ideals that compel or allure it into error, and 
of practical maxims that must be believed in, and acted upon, 
although they afford no objective truth. Reason is a living 
unity ; it is nothing less than the entire soul of man regarded 
as both active and receptive in commerce with Reality. In 
its own ministrations, whether as belonging to the individual 
or to the race, there is no sacrilege which it visits with a 
more dreadful vengeance than that committed in the effort 
to extinguish any of the sacred fires which are burning on its 
one altar. 

Even the most wow-intellectual, the least conceptual and 
ratiocinative of the arts is a ministration of truth to those 
whose ears have been touched so as to be open and receptive 
to it. Music, as such, conveys a message to the human soul 
which cannot be thrown into the forms of cognitive judgment, 
or of a convincing syllogism that illustrates the invincible 
character of the principle of sufficient reason. It is the in- 
comparable master, however, of the simpler, more massive and 
fundamental, the universal and unchanging forms of human 
emotion. The life which it expresses, cultivates, and expands 
is the life of those feelings that have, in themselves, some- 
thing of an undying and an ideal value. But he would have 
a hard task who should undertake to convince any lover of 
music who is at the same time intelligently appreciative and 
reflective as to the meaning of his own experience, that no 
truer view of the nature of life and of all Reality is gained 
through its sesthetical ministrations. The rather would such 
an one be inclined to maintain that an epitome of the history 
of the human soul, and of the race, etched in broad lines of 
emotion, may be given in a great musical composition as in 
no other way. 



ETHICAL AND iESTHETICAL "MOMENTA" 525 

It is in poetry, however, that ethical and aesthetical in- 
fluences may combine with products of accurate perception 
and careful, well-grounded reflective thinking to create pic- 
tures of life and Reality that have a high degree of value 
for the truth they convey to the mind of man. However 
one may decide the contention between those who exalt the 
pleasure-giving function of poetry and those who emphasize its 
didactic power and disciplinary offices, — and this contention 
does not concern us here, — there can be no doubt that men 
generally, and in all time, have looked to the greater poets as 
to seers of the truth of things. " Imitative art in its highest 
form — poetry," says Aristotle — " is an expression of the uni- 
versal element in human life ; " and, again, " Poetry is more 
philosophic and of higher worth than history." This estimate 
may seem exaggerated, and the accompanying depreciation of 
history unworthy. But when a modern critic declares that 
"a great poet must be a man made wise by large experience, 
much feeling, and deep reflection ; above all, he must have a 
hold of the great central truth of things," he is enforcing the 
same epistemological truth which we are expounding. And 
the demand which the art of poetry makes upon the soul of 
its devotee, if met successfully, enables the product of the art 
not only to give aesthetical enjoyment for its beauty, but to 
" improve an opportunity " for conveying to other minds a 
truer and broader conception of that meaning which lies in 
the real being and actual transactions of things. The poet's 
work may exemplify what Aubrey De Vere says of the work 

of Wordsworth : — 

"Wisdom sheathed 
In song love-humble ; contemplations high, 
That built like larks their nests upon the ground; 
Insight and vision, sympathies profound 
That spanned the total of humanity." 

" Poetry," says Matthew Arnold, " interprets in two ways : 
it interprets by expressing with magical felicity the physi- 
ognomy and movement of the outward world, and it inter- 



526 ETHICAL AND ^ESTHETIC AL "MOMENTA" 

prets by expressing, with inspired conviction, the ideas and 
laws of the inward world of man's moral and spiritual nature. 
In other words, poetry is interpretative, both by having natu- 
ral magic in it, and by having moral profundity.'" Which- 
ever of its two great offices poetry worthily fulfils, whether 
it be the artistic representation of the actual world or the 
creation of ideals that refine and rest the soul, it may fitly 
claim to be the teacher of truth to humanity. 

It is not, of course, easy — and perhaps it is not possible 
— to vindicate the objective truthfulness of the judgment 
which the average man makes when, on contemplating some 
particular thing in nature, he declares it to be beautiful; 
or of the judgment which the devout believer in Providence 
pronounces when he makes a declaration as to the ethical 
significance of some natural event. For such judgments as 
these are confessedly do not rest upon major premises which 
themselves represent the incontestable summaries, as it were, 
of the experience either of the individual or of the race. 
One does not say, " The tree is beautiful " with precisely the 
same degree or kind of conviction as that with which one 
says, u The tree is bare of its leaves," or, " The tree is begin- 
ning to turn green." And the devoutest believer in Providence 
can scarcely turn from the man who denies in toto the truth 
of his opinion respecting the providential character of a natu- 
ral event with any stronger feelings than those of a subdued 
sadness at a lack of religious insight or of so-called faith. 
On the other hand, the reflective student of human nature 
will constantly recur to such general facts as have already 
been sufficiently called to mind. They concern the deep- 
set tendency to take an aesthetical and an ethical view of 
the entire World and of what takes place in it. And if 
this view does not contravene or impair the cognitions that 
arise when things are considered from other points of view, 
the significance of this tendency, and the theory of Reality 
it tends to support, cannot be overlooked in fidelity to a 



ETHICAL AND iESTHETICAL "MOMENTA" 527 

comprehensive philosophy of knowledge. We may, perhaps, 
even feel warranted in adopting the admonitions of the 
preacher, Frederick Robertson : " But of course, if you lead a 
sensual life, or a mercenary or artificial life, you will not 
read these truths in nature. A pure heart and a simple, 
manly life alone can reveal to you all that which seer and 
poet saw." 

It is not a part of the legitimate task of epistemology, 
however, to assign to the beautiful and to the morally good 
their places in that system of beings which is known to man 
as real. Other branches of philosophy must discuss the 
question, whether Reality itself is not the Ground of all 
human ethical and sesthetical ideals ; is not Itself the all- 
beautiful and ethically perfect One. But the critical study 
of the problem of knowledge prepares the way for an ap- 
proach to these questions. It does even much more than 
this ; it indicates what that answer is likely to be. And to 
make this clear we have only to recall at this point the 
different impulses which have been received from the con- 
clusions reached upon the various subordinate problems of 
epistemology. These all appear to combine in enforcing a 
unitary conception of the Reality that is made known to us 
in our system of cognitions both as individuals and as mem- 
bers of the race. 

The life of the mind of man must be described as begin- 
ning and proceeding in the form of an ever richer and more 
content-full knowledge of the Self, existing and acting in 
manifold relations to beings that are indubitably distinguished 
from the Self as not belonging to it, — whether as its states 
or its doings, — but as the states and the doings of not-selves. 
What these " not-selves " really are, and what they actually 
do, can be known only as the mind constitutes them after 
the analogy of the self-known Self. That they are known 
as thus constituted is a fundamental epistemological fact; 
and the denial of the import of this fact leads to a seep- 



528 ETHICAL AND ^STHETICAL "MOMENTA" 

tical solipsism so complete and so absurd that it does not 
even admit of intelligible statement. That " non-selves " 
really are thus constituted is the truth which, in the form 
of an ontological postulate, is needed to validate the results 
of all human knowledge ; and which is, in fact, virtually ac- 
cepted by all cognitive minds as validating these results. 
Those fundamental forms of the thought-process, which are 
called the principles of identity and of sufficient reason, 
implicate this " self-like " constitution of things. Things 
are known as having any identity, as really being at all, only 
on the supposition that they in their changes remain true* 
to immanent ideas. And they are known as united together 
into the unity of one real World only when they are re- 
garded as being and behaving in a quasi-rational and teleo- 
logical way. Indeed, it is only when we regard them as 
"momenta" in the Life of a Being which is actually realiz- 
ing its own immanent ideas that we can be said to know 
them as belonging to the system of the one great and orderly 
World. For the ontological implicates — " envisaged, be- 
lieved in, or inferred " — of all human knowledge, both as a 
fact and as a growth, may be gathered into one inclusive 
implicate : The System of interrelated beings which are the 
objects of knowledge is known only through its manifestation 
of the attributes of a Self. Whatever characteristics which 
we know to belong to ourselves must be excluded from our 
conception of this System; still only such implicates as the 
Self knows itself to have can be included in the conception. 

It is at once obvious, therefore, that ethical and aesthetical 
predicates are by no means necessarily shut out from man's 
knowledge of Reality. It is no more intrinsically absurd, as 
it were, to attribute predicates of this kind to the system of 
interrelated beings than to attribute the other predicates 
given to this system by the physical sciences. But what par- 
ticular self-known predicates may be assigned to Reality, and 
with what modified meaning, it belongs to reflective thinking 



ETHICAL AND ^STHETICAL "MOMENTA" 529 

to determine. Even among themselves, men differ greatly 
concerning the conformity of particular beings, or of concrete 
actions, to their own ethical and aesthetical ideals. This differ- 
ence shows that the mind is here dealing with subjects which, 
although not to be wholly disconnected from its most assured 
cognitions, are not connected with these cognitions in the 
most assured way. They belong to the realm in which feeling, 
and what is called " faith," have a more important part to 
perform. But this conclusion is a very different thing from 
assigning all apparent cognitions concerning these subjects to 
the realm of illusion, or of the wholly unknowable. For it has 
been shown that feeling and faith are factors in all knowl- 
edge. And, . above all, what we do most assuredly know 
about Reality is favorable, rather than otherwise, to the con- 
fidence that when the voice of humanity gives It an ethical 
and an sesthetical significance, this voice is not publishing 
the dreams of its own night already past, but is rather pro- 
claiming a truth about Reality that is advancing into the 
clearer light of the more perfect day. 



34 



CHAPTER XVIII 

KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

THERE are two questions of very general import and 
somewhat indefinite character, that seem to require 
further discussion in the light of the conclusions at which 
we have arrived from a critical study of human knowledge. 
Of these the first concerns itself with an attempt more pre- 
cisely to determine the relations in which the cognitive 
processes stand to that Reality which they claim mentally 
to represent ; and the second aims at so apprehending the 
nature of this Reality as best to comport with the assured 
conclusions of a critical but positive epistemology. In 
other words, we raise again the inquiries : What has real- 
ity to do with knowledge, and knowledge with reality ? and, 
What kind of a theoretical construction of the system of 
real beings and actual transactions is most compatible with 
the results of epistemology ? It will be seen at once that 
both these questions are metaphysical. The former borrows 
from metaphysics a certain ontological conception, that it may 
the better clear up our conceptions of the nature and validity 
of knowledge ; the latter criticises and purifies the ontologi- 
cal conception of (and so lends something to) metaphysics by 
adjusting it to already accepted conceptions of the nature and 
validity of knowledge. Both of these questions have occu- 
pied us frequently : the detailed discussion of the former is 
drawing to its close ; and the latter must soon definitively be 
merged in a systematic and critical doctrine of Reality. But 
the task of a critical philosophy of knowledge will be more 



KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 531 

satisfactorily accomplished if its general positions on these 
subjects are separated from the details of subordinate dis- 
cussions, and briefly presented in broader and stronger 
outlines. 

The relations, in general, which exist between Knowledge 
and Reality have thus far been expressed in a variety of 
ways. For example, it has been held that cognition can take 
place only as a living relation between subject and object ; 
and that in every act of cognition the object is some form or 
manifestation of reality. Knowledge itself then appears as 
an actual commerce between the knower and some really 
existent either Self or Thing. For who can escape the force 
of such an argument as this : No possible knowing without a 
real knower and a real being known ; and no actual knowing 
without a relation, in reality, being established between 
them ? But when psychological analysis was employed to 
show how the entire mind is concerned in knowledge, differ- 
ent words were used to express the peculiar relations in 
which the different so-called faculties, or forms of mental 
functioning, stand toward the object, in the unity of the cog- 
nitive process. Moreover the different kinds of knowledge — 
such as immediate and mediate — seem to require a still 
further differentiation of these relations. In knowledge by 
sense-perception or self-consciousness, for example, words 
like " intuition " or " envisagement " appear appropriate to 
express the relation actually existing between the cognitive 
subject and the object of cognition. While in both imme- 
diate and mediate knowledge, the part which the will takes — 
for all cognition is essentially active — is expressed in highly 
figurative terms, as a sort of " seizure " of reality. Feeling, 
too, appears to present its claims to some part in this series, 
or system, of complicated relations ; and its claims are best 
satisfied by assigning to the affective powers of the soul the 
function of believing in, or entertaining a conviction respect- 
ing, reality. 



532 KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

And now if one enters into the details of the relations in 
which reality stands to knowledge in the processes of sense- 
perception, when considered under terms of a psycho-physical 
and psychological theory, one will be compelled to emphasize 
strongly the admissions that slip or are wrung from the 
founder of modern epistemological criticism. For Kant's doc- 
trine, strictly interpreted, forbids him to assert, and even to 
postulate or conjecture, any definite forms of relation between 
the mind and things-in-themselves ; since there can be no other 
than a merely negative and limiting concept of extra-mental 
reality. But Kant himself constantly assumes and speaks as 
though the content of sense, in distinction from its form, were 
" caused " by a reality that is something more than our phe- 
nomenon ; and every attempt at a science of psychology is 
obliged to deal with the experiences of cognition through the 
senses in the same way. The precise terms employed by the 
psychologist to express this relation of dependence may vary 
greatly ; but in some form a certain relation or set of relations 
must always be assumed. That which actually happens in 
what really exists, but exists as a not-me, either " causes," or 
"excites," or "stimulates," or "runs parallel with" my sen- 
sory-motor consciousness considered as a cognition of chang- 
ing things. So, too, when we come to consider the nature of 
thinking and the part it plays in cognition, we seem compelled 
to express the essence of the relations between knowledge and 
reality as some sort of a " correspondence." The a categories," 
so-called, are not, indeed, to be conceived of as copies of trans- 
cendent realities. But neither can they be regarded as pure 
rules of our understanding, that are wholly independent of 
extra-mental realities, and govern in a world apart, as it were. 

Cognition itself appears to itself to be essentially this : the 
mental representation of the real being and actual transac- 
tions of things. And no other better word can be found for 
summing up the manifold relations of Knowledge and Reality, 
essentially considered, than this word, a " commerce " between 



KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 533 

mind and its object, the truly existent. Finally, it was shown 
that a world of reality is so " implicate " in human knowledge 
that the denial of all meaning to this term — pregnant as it is 
with an entire brood of relations — lands us in the very depths 
of absurdity. Whereas, if we will once admit with hopeful in- 
telligence and reasonable cheerfulness what we are bound to 
admit in some manner and to an indefinitely large extent, — 
namely, the correspondence or systematic relationship of the 
cognitive Self with that all-inclusive Reality which encompasses 
it, when conceived of as an Absolute Self, — then all the separate 
and subordinate forms of relation are taken up into and merged 
in a relation between the individual and the Universal, both 
cognized in terms of Self 

It is some such view as this which we desire now somewhat 
further to expound and to defend ; and perhaps the fittest be- 
ginning of both exposition and defence will be to remove cer- 
tain misapprehensions which commonly stand in its way. 
Here, as so often happens in every branch of philosophy, the 
most serious and dangerous misapprehensions arise in the 
form of those half-truths that represent the results of over- 
hasty and too comprehensive generalizations. Among such 
generalizations the various forms of an Identity-hypothesis 
are particularly prominent. But the relations between cog- 
nizing subject and object cognized, — the knower and the 
known, — in which cognition itself consists, cannot be sum- 
marized with fidelity to the facts and laws of human experi- 
ence in any form of a theory of identity. To know is not, in 
fact, to identify one's Self with the object of one's knowledge ; 
and to know one thing from another, or any one particular thing 
as related to others, is not simply to pronounce upon the self- 
identity of this one thing, or to affirm the identity of all things. 
That the very nature of knowledge implies some kind of an 
interrelation in a unity of knower and of all objects of knowl- 
edge has been the ontological thesis to which all our critical 
examination of the epistemological problem has been tending. 



534 KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

But that knowledge is essentially based also on the making 
of distinctions, and that in its very essence it validates a dif- 
ference in things — a self-differentiation that must be regarded 
as trans-subjective, as also ontological — has been made equally 
clear. We cannot even admit the truth of Wundt's declara- 
tion 1 that, in fact, object and active mental representation ( Ob- 
ject and Vorstellung) are originally identical ; and that, there- 
fore, in this fact is to be found the easy and complete solution 
of all the difficulties which belong to the problem of the trans- 
subjectivity of the object of cognition ; for unless an active 
mental representation distinguishes the total content of con- 
sciousness in such a way as to result in an object that is not 
and cannot be identified with the representing subject, no cog- 
nition of things can take place. Psychologically, the process 
on which such cognition depends is one of discrimination, 
which results in setting the Thing over against the Self as a 
not-self. 

And even that process of assimilation and conscious recog- 
nition which results in knowing the Self as one with itself, 
and the Thing as one thing that is, however, a not-self, bears 
no real resemblance to the cognition of an identity in that 
meaning of the word which is employed by the theory in ques- 
tion. For the very conception of identity has its warrant in 
the activity of a discriminating consciousness which recognizes 
that the successive differences in the appearance of Self and 
of things follow some order, as though controlled by an imma- 
nent idea. At no time in the growth of its knowledge can 
the self-conscious Subject regard its object-thing as identical 
with itself. To succeed in doing this would be to destroy the 
existence of the thing as an object of cognition. Nor could 
different things be known as identical without destroying both 
the subjective influence and the objective validity of that very 
connection between things which makes all our conceptual 
and inferential knowledge of them possible. The principle of 

1 Compare System der Philosophie, p. 142. 



KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 535 

sufficient reason has been shown to be regulative and suggest- 
ive in the cognitive experience of man, rather than an ada- 
mantine and quasi-physical law of identification. It guides 
and stimulates the mind in its effort to know things as bound 
together into an ideal unity, although still of necessity differ- 
ent and individual, because in fact they pay attention to each 
other. This may be expressed by saying that things, however 
different, are known as regarding not only their own but each 
other's immanent ideas. Even as applied to objective phe- 
nomena, the principle is not so much dictatorial and compul- 
sory as insinuating, persuading, divining, like the rules that 
control an object of art. In self-consciousness, too, it was 
seen that the relation of subject and object is not properly, 
and is far from being completely, defined as one of identity. 
Nor does the so-called identity which I know myself to have 
— the highest conceivable form of identification — appear as 
the principle which defines the relation of subject and object 
in knowing. Even here the complete identification of the two 
would be the complete cessation of the life of self-knowledge. 
In self-consciousness, therefore, where the ultimate ground 
for the identity of subject and object is sought, the question 
must still be dealt with, whether this fundamental opposition, 
as it were, in all Being, this immanent activity that differen- 
tiates subject and object, can be abolished, as the ontological 
identity-theory maintains. 

If every vestige of a claim to explain the subjective charac- 
ter of knowledge by an identity-hypothesis vanishes before the 
critical analysis of psychology and epistemology, every trace 
of comfort disappears when the same hypothesis is tested on 
the side of its ontological value and validity. The conception 
which it offers of an absolutely changeless Being, an Entity 
that is rigid, self-identical and definable, if at all, only by the 
possession of a fixed set of most highly abstract qualifications, 
is theoretically untenable. It accounts for nothing as a working 
hypothesis ; and measured by the teleological idea or brought 



536 KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

to face the standards of ethics and aesthetics, it proves of no 
practical value. And then such a Being is not, and cannot 
be, an object of any kind or degree of knowledge. Common- 
sense does not recognize it ; nor will it explain or serve the 
work-a-day life of humanity. Science knows it not, and can 
get no actual service from it as an assumption or a theory. 
Philosophy, feeling, like the lioness, that she must bring forth 
only one offspring at a birth, has often, indeed, tried to heighten 
the claims of this single product of her conception by increas- 
ing the seeming extent of its superficies at the expense of 
organic variety within. Thus has human thought about the 
One Being, in which all particular beings have as it were their 
share, been rendered much too vague and devoid of content to 
assist in explaining the origin, the characteristics, or the im- 
port of the meanest of things. But epistemology reminds 
ontology of this inevitable obligation : Unless the conception of 
the really existent World is made to contain within itself the 
'principles necessary, not only for establishing its own Unity, 
but for explaining the infinite variety of the growing cognitive 
experience of humanity, valid knowledge is itself rendered 
impossible. 

From whatever point of view, therefore, we approach the 
subject, it appears that the relations of knowledge and reality 
cannot be summarized in terms of an identity-hypothesis. 
There is, however, another and more subtle set of consid- 
erations which are often employed unwarrantably to restrict 
the variety of admissible relations felt to be necessary, as 
existent between the knowing subject and Keality, in order to 
validate human knowledge. These considerations grow, in 
part, out of that temptation to conceit which makes men feel 
that their way of looking at things alone conveys the truth of 
things ; or, at least, that the particular truths which come to 
them are, so to speak, preferred truths at the supreme court 
of absolute reason. Thus do we find men of science despising 
that knowledge of natural objects and relations which makes 



KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 537 

up the entire product of the " plain man's " cognitive activity. 
And as for philosophy and its points of view for regarding 
Reality, how often do both the unscientific and the so-called 
scientific regard it without effort to conceal their contempt ! 
But, alas ! philosophy has, in turn, frequently forgotten that 
its own business is to appreciate and understand the average 
consciousness of mankind, and that the deep and high things 
of its own seeking are all therein contained ; while, in these 
modern days, to be ignorant of scientific truths is to be incap- 
able of effective work in philosophizing. Yet again, no more 
bitter contempt of others, or arrogant conceit of superior 
knowledge, or confident assumption of being a favorite of the 
Absolute, is anywhere to be found than exists in the breasts 
of those who know neither science nor philosophy. Witness 
the conversation and the conduct, in spite of all that is called 
" modern education," of the multitude of men in trades, busi- 
ness, politics, and even the so-called " learned professions " ! 

Now, so far as such misapprehensions are due to ethical 
and sesthetical influences, the theory of knowledge cannot 
deal with them. But there is really an intellectual fallacy 
here which is in conflict with important epistemological prin- 
ciples. This fallacy consists in the assumption that only one 
way of mentally representing the real being and actual trans- 
actions of things can be true ; or, at any rate, that the truth 
to be preferred, for all purposes, before all other truths, is 
either the so-called u common-sense," the scientific, or the 
philosophical. Such a view of the nature of knowledge, of the 
nature of Reality, and of the nature of the cognitive relation 
between the knowing subject and the reality known, is — to 
speak plainly— both false and degrading. Even the most 
meagre human cognition results from an inner play of powers 
that are capable of catching and truthfully reflecting many 
sides of the real being and actual transactions of things. And 
Reality is rich enough to supply a true and manifold content 
to all degrees and kinds of cos;nizin£ minds. The truths of 



538 KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

the plain man's consciousness, of the scientific inquirer, and 
of the reflective thinker, are not contradictory. They are all 
valid ; because they are all authenticated by the infinitely varied 
Life of the really Existent. Should one doubt or fear for this 
Life, that IT will not be able " to live up to " the growing life 
in cognitive consciousness of the whole race of men ? 

On the contrary, every single thing and every event actually 
is all that — and, doubtless, infinitely more than — it truly 
appears to be, to the various observing and reflecting minds. 
What is needed to destroy the current fallacy is, not to dimin- 
ish the content of knowledge, but to increase the conception of 
the content of Reality ; for there is actually that in every 
thing and every event which is sufficient to correspond to all 
the different ways of cognizing its reality which are actually 
realized in all the different minds. 

Let this truth of fact and of epistemological theory be illus- 
trated by the following examples. I am standing upon the 
shore of a body of water, and I stoop down and gather a hand- 
ful of the sand which lies at my feet. To me it appears to 
be what it would appear to be to any one else of similar con- 
stitution of sense-perceptive faculty, who had had a similar 
experience in the most ordinary developments of conceptual 
knowledge. It is known as mere " sand," having such quali- 
ties as the common senses of men discern and such uses as 
have been ascertained by the growing experience of the race. 
But now I take from my pocket a magnifying-glass of good 
lens-power, and, by looking through it, transform the common 
sand into an innumerable collection of significant forms, — 
either crystals whose molecules have arranged themselves in 
seeming obedience to mathematical formulas, or shells that 
show their origin in having been deposited by millions of 
living beings in the past of long ago. I carry this collection 
to the chemical and mineralogical or biological laboratory, 
and the experts there spend much time in determining the 
genesis, the atomic constitution, the specific qualifications and 



KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 539 

physical or organic connections of the elements of that which 
to the naked and untrained eye appears but common sand. 
From them I learn, with increasing wonder and admiration, 
of the wealth in reality of that which seemed at first so poor 
and ordinary a thing. And as I reflect upon the mysterious 
action of the forces that either rapidly marshalled the atoms 
along what appear to be consciously selected lines of prefer- 
ence, Or more slowly built them into a tiny organism accord- 
ing to a more or less obvious plan, I am encouraged to 
attempts at higher flights of cognitive faculty. The mar- 
vellous inner life of what the scientific man calls Nature, and 
the mindful manifestation of what the devout soul recognizes 
as the power and wisdom of God, impress me profoundly. 
Speculative interests are aided by ethical and asstlietical in- 
terests, — although, perhaps, of a vaguer and less easily 
defensible sort. But, yielding to the serious impulse I pro- 
claim as a cognitive judgment : this tiny thing, when con- 
sidered as what it is in itself, and what, in its origin and 
connections, it represents, is indeed a "moment" of the 
Divine Life, a realization in particular of the Universal 
Spirit, of the Absolute Self. 

Now let it be noted that, while all these alleged cognitive 
judgments as to the being and implied powers of this handful 
of common sand do not rest upon precisely the same founda- 
tions for their genesis or for their validity, they do not at all, 
of necessity, contradict each other. They may all be alike 
true ; they may all be needed to express, even imperfectly, 
the reality of this particular thing. They seem, indeed, to 
follow so quietly and beautifully in train for the mind that 
will not brusquely (and almost brutally) interrupt its own life 
of cognition that they have good seeming of being true. 
That sand there is, — white, hard, heavy, and good for mor- 
tar or to be burned for lime ; but it is also, known to chem- 
istry as constituted out of certain hypothetical elements, to 
biology or to mineralogy as having such a mechanical struc- 



540 KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

ture or vital genesis, and to the naturalist as a part of the great 
system of inorganic and organic evolution. But to the higher 
philosophical reflection it is, in very truth, a thing of spiritual 
import, a being that finds its existence and attributes in the 
same Ground in which all existences, with all their attributes, 
are found. To the knower, then, this one particular thing 
stands, under the general relations of knowledge, as being 
at the same time, and in reality, all that sense-perception, 
science, and philosophy tell him that it is. And if he would 
know, as completely as man can know, this thing, this com- 
mon sand, he must regard it from all these different points 
of view. 

What is epistemologically true of any particular thing is 
true of every particular thing. Each most common and lowly 
member of that system of real beings and actual transactions 
which forms the ever varying and yet ideally faithful object of 
human knowledge, presents an indefinite number of sides to the 
mind of the knower. Of the chair beneath me, of the table 
before me, of the books upon their shelves over yonder, I may 
truthfully say : they are really all that ordinary perception, 
all that every branch of scientific analysis and theory, and all 
that the supreme generalizations of reflective thinking, or the 
insight of the philosophic spirit, proclaim them to be. Each 
of these things reveals itself to the senses in terms that are 
peculiar to each sense, and that are dependent upon the spe- 
cial relations which each sense sustains to the trans-subjective 
object. But without dividing its unity or annulling its exist- 
ence as an object of sense-perception, each of them also 
appeals to the sciences of chemistry, physics, biology, and 
even to the history of the development of the human race, 
to tell us what it really is. Yolumes issued under the titles 
of the particular sciences might be filled with truths and 
half-truths without exhausting the description of the real 
being of the most commonplace thing. Nor should a false 
shame keep us from declaring what a true reverence com- 



KNOWLEDGE AXD REALITY 541 

mends : It, too, is not so mean and obscure a thing as to fail 
of attaining some of the fundamental qualifications of our own 
selfhood. And as, under the enthusiasm over that wonder- 
ful inner structure which modern physico-chemical science so 
elaborately describes, we seem to see yet further into each 
lowly reality consecrated to the commonest of uses, we 
do no indignity to the Infinite Will that is the core of all 
Keality if we declare its self-realization to be recognizable 
even here. 

What is true of each particular tiling is also true of each 
event. For every event actually is, at one and the same time, 
a transaction cognizable from an indefinite variety of points 
of view. Before the eye of every beholder the stone falls to 
the ground, the arrow flies toward its mark, or the shooting 
star sinks exhausted in the distant horizon. This is the so- 
called u phenomenon," the truth of reality that appears to the 
senses from their characteristic points of view. But either of 
these events is capable of being regarded, and if it is to be 
known in the fulness of its actuality, must be regarded, from 
other and varied scientific points of view. The formulas that 
express the laws of gravitation and of the resistance of the 
atmosphere, and whatever is known of the great cosmic 
forces concerned in each one of these events, do not contra- 
dict the truth that is in the phenomenon. It and they may, 
indeed, be so stated as to involve themselves in seeming con- 
tradiction. This result comes, however, because error or half- 
truth is possible in such judgments as are pronounced, from 
whatever points of view. But the reality experiences no diffi- 
culty in appearing to the senses in one way, and at the same 
time and in the same transaction being known to science in a 
variety of other ways. Nor do the truths of sense-perception 
and of science conspire together with an agreement to offer 
common opposition to him who will regard the same event as 
an item of Divine Providence, — a truly aesthetical or ethical 
affair. The stroke of lightning is actually seen as a zigzag 



542 KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

line of blinding light; and it may be conceived of as the 
behavior of an electrical current according to its own laws, — 
no more, and yet no less, if we conclude also to regard it as 
the messenger of the Divine purposes in the execution of a 
great World-plan. Here, again, attention must be recalled to 
the difference in the grounds and in the character of the 
judgments pronounced from these different points of view. 
What is claimed is this : They may all alike be true ; for 
Keality has enough of content and of varied forms of action 
to satisfy all. 

What is true of each thing and of every event is emphati- 
cally and necessarily true of that sum-total of Reality which 
is, always very partially and often defectively and erroneously, 
given to human cognition. In sense-perception men know the 
truth of things ; the real being and the actual transactions 
of the existing World are the objects of cognition through 
the senses. In all his work-a-day and ordinary consciousness 
of what is under his eye and hand, of what sounds in his ears 
and breathes odors upon him or furnishes the gratification of 
his tastes, every man stands in the presence of Reality. He 
knows he did not make it, nor can he destroy it. He regards 
the statements of an idealism like that of Schopenhauer, for 
example, as no better than the ravings of a madman. These 
first points of departure and lowest stages of cognition are, 
indeed, exceedingly obscure, evanescent, and unrepresentable. 
Perception is a first witness to the presence of truth, — trust- 
worthy but dumb, uncertain, and difficult to comprehend. 
Yet heaven and earth will pass away before men will believe 
that it does not speak words of a meaning to them which has 
other origin than in the nature of their own sensibility and 
object-constructing mind. For cognition of the world of 
things through the senses is essentially trans-subjective ; it 
is not a purely subjective affair, but an actually established 
relation with that which is other and real. 

That knowledge of the world of things which comes through 



KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 543 

sense-perception is the firm basis to which scientific knowl- 
edge returns again and again. Scientific knowledge is largely 
a system of unseen entities and generalized modes of behavior 
which the intellect constructs in the effort better to under- 
stand and to anticipate the repeated cognition of things by 
sense-perception. It has already been shown that this entire 
system of conceptions and judgments is unworthy of the 
name of knowledge, unless we admit the postulate that 
Reality actually is quasi-rational, and, at least in part, teleo- 
logical. Science, in other words, assumes that the categories 
are applicable to the system of real beings and actual events 
with which it aims to deal ; this assumption is the prerequisite 
of all its quest after the truth of things. But all its progress, 
on the other hand, is a perpetually concrete verification of the 
same assumption. For Reality, on the whole, keeps justifying 
the assumption, although it disappoints many of the hopes 
and eludes many of the devices of the scientific inquirer. For 
the very conception and the reasoning which science employs 
always carry with them the postulate of the transcendent. 
The Reality which appears as so related to us in sense- 
perception that we can speak of the relation in terms of an 
envisagement, appears in our system of scientific cognitions 
as still real but postulated as transcendent and yet further 
known by complicated and valid processes of inference. The 
cognitions of science do not, however, contradict those of 
sense-perception ; for the really existent World, as known 
both by sense-perception and by scientific inference, is one 
and the same World. 

Nor does the philosophical view of things come in to over- 
throw or contradict either the ordinary or the scientific view 
of the same things. That insight which deciphers the inner 
nature of Nature and renders, at least partially, intelligible 
its import and value, does not despise or contravene either the 
knowledge of sense-perception or the more conceptual and 
abstract knowledge of the natural sciences. " It results," says 



544 KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

Schopenhauer, 1 " from, this whole objective consideration of 
the intellect and its origin, that it is designed for the compre- 
hension of those ends upon the attainment of which depends 
the individual life and its propagation, but by no means for 
deciphering the inner nature of things and of the world which 
exists independently of the knower." This despotic dictum of 
a mind professing a proud scorn both for common-sense so 
called and for science, contains an important epistemological 
truth. This truth concerns the teleology of knowledge. For 
our cognitions of things, as they are won by every man in that 
living intercourse and work-a-day commerce with reality which 
actually makes up the existence of most minds, or as they are 
refined, elaborated, and made apparently to undergo a total 
change by the use of instrumentation, and by inference of a 
carefully regulated kind, are designed for the attainment of 
certain ends. These ends, however, rise to heights far above 
those described by Schopenhauer as the life of the individual 

a mere " will to live " — and the propagation of the species. 

But something more is emphatically true of the knowledge 
both of ordinary sense-perception and of scientific generaliza- 
tion ; it is also designed for u deciphering the inner nature of 
things and of the world that exists independently of the 
knower." This independently existent world is the very world 
known by the " plain man's " consciousness as well as by the 
more systematic and highly abstract cognitions of science. 
The germs of insight into the " inner nature of things " lie 
waiting recognition and development in every human mind. 
Every man is a metaphysician and a philosopher ; he who can 
say homo sum is forced to confess both an interest in this 
inner nature and an undeveloped potency of insight. Nor is 
the insight something far away from him, — "over seas" or 
" up aloft." It is rather, if he will hear it, a word near him, 
and ready to be put into his own mouth. 

Moreover, men generally — all men, as soon and as far as 

1 World as Will and Idea (English translation), iii. p. 21. 



KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 545 

they reach the reflective stage of development — recognize in 
every natural object a somewhat that goes far beyond what the 
senses receive as a quasi-passive impression. This instinctive 
and natural recognition, given by the human Self to the other 
Self which is immanent in each individual manifestation, is 
the source both of the worship and of the philosophy of Nature. 
It was shown in the last chapter that the human mind can 
only with difficulty, if at all, regard the individual thing as 
not answering in some degree and manner to the teleological 
principle. A more detailed metaphysical discussion would 
make it quite clear that the essential being of every thing 
consists in just this, that the series of its changes, whether 
regarded as self-determined or as otherwise determined, com- 
ports with certain immanent ideas. As long, then, as human 
minds and the things which are the objects of their sense- 
perceptions and of their scientific observations and inferences, 
are constituted thus far alike, insight into " the world which 
exists independently of the knower " cannot be wholly denied 
to those minds. The feeling of awe akin to reverence, and 
of mystery that is allied to religious faith, with which crude 
peoples regard many of the most insignificant of natural 
objects, is a witness to this craving of human nature. The 
satisfaction to this craving which the more reflective knowl- 
edge of all such objects brings, is a witness to the power of 
insight in all men. And that student of chemistry or biology 
who, on account of his comparatively petty attainments in the 
laboratory, has parted with this craving and its satisfaction, 
or who has ceased from the feelings of awe and of mystery 
before the things he daily analyzes, would do well to go to 
school to the " child of nature." But, in fact, if the manhood 
of the knower has kept any sort of pace in its development 
with the growth of his technical knowledge, the scientific 
observer of things is the better fitted for deciphering the inner 
nature of a world that exists in independence of his cognition. 

He who knows things, whether by the senses and as they are 

35 



546 KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

adapted to the ends of individual life, or by all the methods of 
modern science and as a system of interconnected realities, 
but fails completely of this " insight," is fatally defective in 
his cognition : He does not know things as they really are. 
Nor does he need to cease from ordinary sense-perception or 
from scientific generalizations in order to- add to his knowl- 
edge the truth that is obvious only from other points of view ; 
for things themselves are rich enough in content, and are 
actually varied enough in their behavior and in their relations 
to the knower, to make good in reality all the demands that 
are made upon them. 

In a word, if we may speak of ordinary knowledge, scientific 
knowledge, and philosophical knowledge, as three distinguish- 
able kinds of cognition, they are not to be understood as in 
any way contradicting, or even dispensing with, each other. 
In so far as any cognition is attained, whether by the use of 
senses and intellect, as in every man's daily life, or by scien- 
tific investigation, or by reflection upon the essential consti- 
tution and final import of things, it is all valid for the one 
Reality. If we part with this conviction early in the course 
of our epistemological inquiry, or indeed at any given point 
along its path, we can never successfully recover it again. 
Science can give us no genuine claim to know what is the 
nature of the really existent World, after the senses of man 
have been pronounced wholly illusory and incapable of afford- 
ing any such knowledge. Philosophy cannot introduce its 
reflections as valid means for deciphering the inner nature 
of things, after the objective consideration of the intellect as 
employed in the constructions of science has resulted in a 
sceptical idealism or in agnosticism. But the knowledge of or- 
dinary life, of science, and of philosophy is all needed in order 
to fill out to its rounded symmetry the cognitive relation of 
the knower to the real being and the actual transactions of 
things ; and the contradictions which this diversity of cog- 
nitions from different points of view seems to the objector to 



KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 547 

introduce, all vanish as soon as it appears clear what is, as 
thus indicated and evinced, the nature of Reality. For it then 
appears that Reality itself is, what in all these ways it is 
known to be, an ever active and infinitely varied Life mani- 
festing itself to the subject of cognition in indefinitely varied 
ways. 

Another list of misapprehensions respecting the relation of 
Knowledge and Reality may be charged to incorrect or imper- 
fect conceptions of the nature of " cause," and of the applica- 
tion of the causal principle to concrete experiences generally. 
These misapprehensions are either positive or negative. They 
consist either in the misapplication of some subordinate 
form of the causal principle to the relation between the 
cognitive subject and Reality, or in the denial of the appli- 
cation of this principle in any form to the same relation. 
The fuller discussion of this topic also belongs to the 
philosophy of mind and to general metaphysics; but certain 
.observations are a quite indispensable part of epistemological 
theory. 

No other conception has been more loosely held or seduc- 
tively employed than the conception of cause ; and no other 
principle needs to have its meaning and the metaphysics it 
carries with it more suspiciously criticised than the so-called 
principle or " law of causation." Science and philosophy have 
striven, within their own domains and against each other, so 
to fix its meaning as to give to some peculiar metaphysical 
theory, or even to the denial of all possibility of metaphysics, 
the cogency with which this conception and this principle 
are supposed to rule the human mind. In this and in other 
writings, 1 both on psychology and on philosophy, we have had 
repeated occasion to rehearse the descriptive history of its 
origin and to show its varied legitimate or illegitimate uses. 
In much of the current discussion of causation, it appears as 

1 See Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 236 f. ; Psychology, Descriptive and 
Explanatory, chapters xi. and xxi. ; Philosophy of Mind, chapters vii. and viii. ; 
and the present Work, chapter x. 



548 KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

though each advocate of some highly specialized metaphysics, 
whether of physics or of mind, supposed himself at liberty to 
restrict and define the significance of the terms employed 
at his own good pleasure. The supporter of a mechanical 
theory of the universe argues as though causal problems were 
mere sums in mathematics. The biologist or psychologist, of 
certain tendencies and committed to certain interests, reduces 
all causation to the law of the conservation and correlation of 
energy ; and this in spite of the fact that he cannot make the 
slightest valid pretence of accounting in this way for the 
behavior of a muscle-nerve machine, much less of a leucocyte 
when, on approaching the walls of a blood-vessel, it throws 
out a pseudo-pod, and thus penetrating these walls, rallies to 
the defence of the organism against its enemies, in the com- 
pany of its comrades, upon the other side of those walls. 
Conservation and correlation of energy, indeed ! By all means 
let the physicist use his appropriate differentiation of the uni- 
versal principle which binds all beings, both things and minds, 
into a living unity, in those relations of material things to 
one another to which he empirically demonstrates it to be 
applicable. But if the causal principle, as gathered into the 
law of gravitation, does not account for the behavior of mole- 
cules or atoms, why should it seem improbable that the physi- 
cist's pet form of the same universal principle should fail of 
legitimate extension to all changes and relations of living and 
sentient beings ? 

The variety of uses given to the conception of cause, and 
the different forms in application of the causal principle, are 
all adequately explained in the light of its own origin and 
development ; it is itself nothing more than the expression 
of the general fact of some sort of connection amongst all 
the items of our experience. Its origin has been shown to lie 
in that complex of cognitions which marks the earliest inter- 
course of the Self with things, as knowing itself to be active 
in the pursuit of ends, and yet restricted and determined by 



KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 549 

its changing relations to other things. In this complex of 
cognitions all the numerous subordinate classes or phases 
of the conception of cause get the fullest expression. Out of 
this complex of cognitions, as it develops into a more many- 
sided and symmetrical body of cognitions, these classes or 
phases have their origin. Such of them, and such only, 
should be applied to the relations of things with one another, 
as are known to belong to things ; and to each peculiar class 
of relations such and such only as are discovered, in the 
growth of human knowledge, to be actually adapted to each 
class. Relations of mere quantity, when these relations 
change, may possibly be expressed in terms of mere quan- 
tity. But in other relations, quality counts and even domi- 
nates as respects the form given to the causal conception. 
Again, ideas and final purposes and deeds of will count ; they, 
too, may be so influential as quite to displace any of those 
forms of conceiving the causal relation which are applicable 
only to masses or to molecules of matter. 

What is in general true of all attempts at an application of 
the causal principle to Reality is emphatically true when the 
particular class of applications in question concerns the rela- 
tions, in cognition, between some particular reality and the 
cognitive mind. Here it is imperative that we should be pre- 
cise in both our affirmations and our denials. For even to 
speak of these relations as causal, in certain meanings of the 
word " causal," is to go contrary to all that is most certainly 
known about the nature of all knowledge ; but to deny that 
these relations are causal, in certain other meanings of that 
same word, is to go a long way in the direction of undermin- 
ing the validity of all knowledge. This position, as both 
negative in its guard against important epistemological and 
metaphysical errors, and positive in its assertion of important 
epistemological and metaphysical truths, will now be briefly 
illustrated. 

Nothing can warrant maintaining — either openly under 



550 KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

the honorable avowal of the materialistic hypothesis, or cov- 
ertly and less honorably because espousing the view while 
disclaiming the name — a "causal" relation between the 
knower and any other reality in a manner to imply that such 
other reality is the maker, or author, or producer, or real sub- 
ject, of the cognition itself. I know that the cognitive pro- 
cess, and the judgment of cognition in which it terminates, is 
mine. I, and no other being, either known to exist or con- 
ceivable as existent in unknown relations to me, make this 
judgment. That reality which I know as my Self is the 
author, the producer, of the knowledge which, as subjectively 
considered, it necessarily attributes to itself. That self-con- 
sciousness, which is a prerequisite of the development of all 
knowledge, is the perfectly unimpeachable authority for the 
assignment of the knowledge to the Self as its subject ; to this 
Self which I call mine, this particular cognition, and every 
other cognition, belongs as the product of its total being — 
intellect, feeling, and will. 

And no other being stands in any causal relation similar 
to that of the Self, to any act of cognition. The knower 
knows that he, and he alone, is the maker of the cognitive 
judgment, and the subject of all the experiences in con- 
sciousness which lead up to this judgment. No other being 
can be conceived of as standing in similar causal relation to 
this judgment. Knowledge cannot be conceived of as the prod- 
uct of bodily changes, as " made by " or " thrown off from " 
the brain ; or as having any physico-chemical changes in the 
cerebral substance furnish the subject to which it can be 
attributed as to an initial cause. Every explanation of a 
particular cognition which omits this reference to the subject 
as the real being whose the cognition is, fails of affording a 
full explanation by missing the most essential and universal 
factor in all cognition. Even by evoking the most extreme 
theories of " divine assistance " or of " seeing all things " in 
God, we do not in the least undermine or diminish this essen- 



KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 551 

tial " moment " of all human knowledge. Every primary fact 
of knowledge, no matter how simple and primary, must be 
expressed by the formula, " I know ; " and this formula is 
rendered meaningless by the attempt to substitute for the 
subject of the sentence (for the " Z" that knows) any other 
being, whether conceived of in terms of so-called matter or of 
so-called mind. All theories which break down the invincible 
certainty of this truth of cognition, in the name of science, 
physiological or psychological, juggle with words that, when 
brought to the test of experience, really have no meaning; 
and this is so whether these theories maintain positive or 
negative positions toward the main problem of epistemology. 
Zdo know;, and I cannot conceive of my knowledge as being 
produced by any other being than the knower who claims it 
for his own. 

But, on the other hand, to deny all causal relation whatever 
between the cognitive subject and other reality is equally, 
although not so obviously, unwarrantable. And here we 
can as little sympathize with the squeamishness as with the 
audacity which so widely prevails. All the ordinary experience 
of men with things is pledged to maintain the right of em- 
ploying the causal conception, in some one or more of its 
several significations, to express actual relations between their 
cognitions and the real being and actual transactions of 
things. Changes in real things account for, explain, deter- 
mine, and are in different ways causally related to, our chang- 
ing cognitions. The blow upon my skin, or the burning coal 
applied to it — an actual and extra-mental transaction — causes 
the painful cognition of my own body as struck or burned. 
The various phases through which my cognitive consciousness 
runs, as I watch some connected series of events or some 
long-continued process in the external world, are known as 
dependently connected with that series or process regarded as 
a £rans-subjective affair. Nor do I really in the least alter 
the state of the case when, by prolonged study of psycho- 



552 KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

physics, I assume myself to be wiser than most men are, con- 
cerning the more immediate and hidden antecedents of my 
changes of cognitive consciousness. Speaking in the name 
of " science " (what name more abused than this ?), and tak- 
ing on lofty airs of superior information, does not accomplish 
a deliverance from those necessities of intellect and imagi- 
nation which characterize all human knowledge. " Cerebral 
states " remain nothing but hypothetical changes in an inferred 
reality, interjected between changes directly observed in exter- 
nal things and correlated changes in our own cognitive con- 
sciousness. If they explain these known conscious changes, 
then they must themselves be conceived of as actual transac- 
tions in some really existent thing, that is not known as part 
of the Self, — in this case, the substance of the cerebral areas. 
If there are such actual changes in real things, and if these 
changes actually explain the changes in the conscious states 
of cognition, then the former trans-subjective changes must, 
in some sense of the word, be the " causes " of the latter and 
subjective changes. For this is precisely what we inevitably 
mean by the very word " cause," in the most common of its 
several meanings. Indeed, one of the most fundamental and 
useful of the laws governing the scientific search after causal 
relations may be stated thus : If the being A (the cognizing 
agent) regularly passes through the series of changes A, A a , 
A&, Ay, in sequence upon the observed or inferred changes of 
the other being B (the brain) in the series B, B*, B h , B c , then 
the latter series is, at least, a part of the cause of the former. 
In vain does the science of physiological psychology — out 
of an artificial and uncomely regard for the universal integrity 
of certain physical principles of a quite limited applica- 
bility, or for other similar considerations — strive to escape 
the obligation which its own discoveries impose upon it. To 
substitute other terms for the word " cause " when, after all, 
you really mean cause, is but a subterfuge that advances no 
genuine scientific interest. The resort to a theory of psycho- 



KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 553 

physical parallelism introduces, in the alleged interests of 
scientific explanation, a view that, essentially considered, is a 
violation of every canon of genuine science ; logically carried 
out, it results in undermining the entire foundations of intel- 
lect by separating it from all real connection with the transac- 
tions that go on in the world of things. 

But why hesitate to use the word " causal," with the proper 
limitations, to express the relations between the cognitive 
mind and those changes in things which stand in most inti- 
mate connection with the mind ? Is any ethical interest liable 
to injury thereby ? Is it a crime for Reality to have a decisive 
influence in determining what I shall know to be true ; espe- 
cially when the apparent object of my knowledge is mentally 
represented as some phase of or transaction in, this Reality 
itself ? If my cognitions were not dependent upon the real 
being and actual transactions of things, and somehow cau- 
sally determined by them, how should I ever know the truth 
of things? If any degradation is suffered by my cognitive 
faculty in thus being dependent upon the causal efficacy of 
those physico-chemical processes which I call " my brain- 
states," the remedy for this would seem to be in my not being 
an animal at all, rather than in resorting to a theory which 
makes a complete breach between my mentality and my ani- 
mality. In fact, however, most of the modern advocates of 
the theory of psycho-physical parallelism do not appear to be 
chiefly mindful of its ethical outcome or of the unhappy 
position in which it places the human soul — cut off, as it 
were, from all valid connection with the world of Nature, and 
left to manufacture and put on sale a commodity which is 
labelled " knowledge," but is utterly devoid of the most 
essential characteristics of genuine knowledge. The extreme 
tenderness with which the principle of causation is applied, 
in any form, to the relations of body and mind, is customarily 
due simply to reverence for that peculiar conception of the 
principle which applies to certain branches of physics alone. 



554 KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

But that conception of cause which has its origin in experience, 
and which experience justifies, is elastic enough to cover these 
relations too ; and, on the other hand, it refuses to cover 
these relations in such a way as to invalidate no small part of 
our most trustworthy cognitions. 

In brief, then, we may — nay, we must — conceive of the 
mind which has the cognition, and of the things which are 
objects of its cognition, as standing together in one causally 
connected system. This system we necessarily conceive of as 
including a great variety of beings that are, considered from 
one point of view, self-determining or active in ways corre- 
sponding to their respective natures; and yet all of them, 
minds and things, are conceived of only as they are manifestly 
parts of the one system. Reality is thus known as a vast 
complex ; in which knowledge emerges as a forthputting of 
mind in its varied causal relations to other forms of reality. 
The transcendency, or trans-subjective application of the 
category of relation is, therefore, an essential presupposition 
of the very existence of cognition. And all particular rela- 
tions, inasmuch as they are all realized only as belonging to 
that complex system of Reality in which the cognitive mind 
has its life of doing and suffering, may be said to exemplify 
some form of the causal principle. To exist as a mind is 
consciously to do and to suffer ; and to know, as the human 
mind is capable of knowledge, is to become aware of the 
doings and sufferings of the Self, and of Things that are not- 
self, in their reciprocal relations of interdependence. Only 
here, the sphere of the Reality that is not included in our 
self-known Self is far larger and firmer in its consistency, as 
it were, than the sphere of that reality which is known as the 
Self. All this amounts to saying that the very existence of 
our cognitive activities, and of the products which mark their 
development, whether for the individual or for the race, rests 
upon the general assumption that things and minds do so 
causally determine each other as to show that they belong to 
one system of Reality. 



KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 555 

Within certain limits, for example, the speed, intensities, 
and range of the changes of minds and things admit of be- 
ing compared in terms of number. Within certain other 
ranges, they admit of being more concretely represented as 
qualitative and quantitative rearrangements, adapted to cer- 
tain ends that are more or less clearly perceived as ends. 
Within certain other limits they seem to admit of being stated 
in terms that have for both minds and things an ethical and 
aesthetical value. Within all these limits and ranges, how- 
ever, and whatever may be the differences of qualification 
which we are obliged to recognize, we must never, on the 
one hand, so conceive of their relation as to sink the reality 
of either in the reality of the other, nor, on the other hand, so 
deny all valid relation and connection between the two as to 
invalidate the actual unity of the system to which both be- 
long. Whether this Unity is complete or not, we may be 
unable to say. What we do know is that its extension is co- 
terminous with, is indeed the presupposition of, all extension 
of human knowledge. And what the Nature of this Unity 
is, the resources of philosophy in its branch of metaphysics 
must be summoned to discover as its own profound problem. 

It is, therefore, both true to the facts of the case and in 
accordance witli a true theory of knowledge, when the rela- 
tions of the knower and the things known are represented 
in various ways, as applicable to different kinds of knowledge 
and to different forms of functioning in the process of cogni- 
tion. For example, the relation of the molecular excitement, 
caused by various forms of physical energy within the senso- 
rium to the changing series of sensory modifications of con- 
sciousness is best represented by speaking of the former as 
the " stimulus" or occasional cause, of the latter. This par- 
ticular relation is, on the contrary, not truthfully represented 
when it is either spoken of as a producing cause or as a mere 
disconnected concomitance of a phenomenal kind. Again, 
the relation of the different modifications of consciousness 



556 KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

to the Ego is truthfully representable only by some such 
terms as " subject " and " state." 

Moreover, the different factors of that total activity or con- 
dition of consciousness which is called " knowledge " stand in 
various relations both to the subject and to the object of knowl- 
edge ; and these various relations need for the most fitting 
mental representation a variety of terms. As a merely feel- 
ing Self my relation to Reality is not the same as that which 
I sustain when considered as a willing or a thinking Self. 
But, then, in my knowledge of the real being and the actual 
transactions of things I am never merely a feeling, or a will- 
ing, or a thinking Self. So, too, the relations which I sustain 
to the object of my cognition need several terms, rather than 
one term only, in order truthfully to express my experience. 
When this object is some present state of the Self, regarded 
as self-consciously known, the term " envisagement" or " in- 
tuition" is needed to express the immediacy, the "face-to- 
face " nature of the relation. But when what I know is a 
proposition in geometry that reposes upon a complicated 
demonstration, or a generalized fact in physical science, or a 
historical statement, the relation in which I stand to my ob- 
ject is not properly represented in the same way. To object 
to the statement that the reality known may be regarded as 
" inferred" or " believed in" is virtually to deny that actual 
variety in the life of the mind which it displays in its rela- 
tions to the various objects of its knowledge. 

Nor is there any obscurity or inconsistency in admitting a 
variety of relations between Reality and Knowledge, but just 
the contrary. Obscurity begins when the attempt is made 
to generalize unwarrantably ; and then, upon the basis of 
such a generalization to force one set of abstractions upon 
the life of the mind so as to make its actual complexity con- 
form to the barren thinking and meagre imagination of some 
psychological or metaphysical theory. But who shall deter- 
mine a priori that the human soul cannot, in and through 



KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 557 

cognition, stand in just this living diversity of relations toward 
Reality ? As though, indeed, Reality itself were too poor in 
content, and in its outgivings and forthputtings too stingy to 
offer itself to the mind of man in a rich and generous diver- 
sity of relations ! 

What question is more pertinent to such a case than this : 
In what experience do all the different forms of relation, con- 
sidered as mere mental functioning, themselves arise ? In 
other words, where does the category of relation, with such 
differentiations and shadings as it really undergoes in the 
life of men, itself originate ? Of course in men's experience as 
subjects of knowledge. In so far, then, as knowledge, on the 
one hand, is a relating activity and, on the other hand, impli- 
cates Reality, it may be expected that the different forms of 
relation will find their justification and validating in knowl- 
edge. But this is only the presumption which all human ex- 
perience ratifies and illustrates ; for in knowledge the mind 
finds itself actually assuming all these forms of relation 
toward Reality. 

Finally, we inquire whether there is any way of summariz- 
ing an epistemological doctrine of Knowledge and Reality so 
as briefly to express the truth of the experience in which men 
appear to themselves to sustain this variety of relations. 
I, as cognizing subject, am set into manifold forms of depen- 
dence and of intercourse with a system of beings, both minds 
and things. How shall I best represent to myself the essen- 
tial features of all these manifold forms of relation, as they 
emerge to my consciousness in the unfolding life of the mind ? 
In the attempt to answer this question, a certain reserve, or 
even modesty, of opinion is becoming ; and whether the 
question can be answered or not, the firmly established facts 
in which the trial for an answer originates must not be over- 
looked or their full value and significance sacrificed. Error 
here, however, is likeliest to arise in unduly restricting our 
views of the life of Knowledge and of the nature of Reality, 



558 KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 

rather than in careful attempts to expand and to elevate these 
views. A large faith in the higher insights of humanity is 
better adapted to lead one to the truth than is a shrinking 
scepticism or a despairing agnosticism. It is, then, our faith 
in reason which is pledged to the answer of this problem ; — 
but only if the answer can be so understood and defended as 
to admit of all the facts and truths which an epistemological 
examination has brought to light. We believe there is one 
figurative and yet valid and true way of representing the es- 
sential features of the relation of Knowledge and Reality, — 
one and only one valid and true way. Human cognition is 
all to he understood as a species of intercourse between minds. 
In all man's knowledge the real being of the finite Self is in 
actual commerce with the Absolute Self. This relation of 
an intercourse between Selves is the one fundamental and 
permanent conception under which may be truthfully included 
all the particular forms of relation of which we have experi- 
ence in the development of the life of cognition. 



CHAPTER XIX 

IDEALISM AND REALISM 

WHAT theory of Reality best accords with the plainest 
facts and the more obvious laws of man's life of 
cognition ? This is a question with which epistemology may 
attempt briefly to deal; for, as has already been shown, 
although this question is obliged to borrow from metaphysics 
certain views as to the nature of things, it borrows these 
views in order the more profoundly to comprehend the nature 
of Knowledge. And when the completer discussions of onto- 
logical problems which is the business of metaphysics, ask 
a return of the loan, it may be repaid with accumulation of 
interest. 

Such an answer to the question just raised as our previous 
discussions enable us to give, shows how each of the more 
prominent ontological theories is checked and corrected, as 
soon as it develops a tendency to proceed to extremes, by a 
true and comprehensive philosophy of knowledge. In their 
eagerness to obtain logical consistency and argumentative 
clearness for themselves, Idealism and Realism, Dualism and 
Monism, are accustomed to override the considerations which 
naturally and fitly suggest moderation, and even a complete 
change in the point of view, before settling definitely the prob- 
lem of universal Being. Each one of these two pairs, as against 
the other of the same pair, has valid claims to present. These 
claims are valid, for they rest upon foundations of assured 
knowledge. When pressed into a conflict with opposing or 
contradictory claims, if their forces are handled by a com- 



560 IDEALISM AND REALISM 

mander skilled in brilliant dialectic, they may appear to 
emerge from the conflict quite victorious. A complete con- 
quest and systematic subjugation and exploration of the en- 
tire realm of Being is then announced ; and one of these four 
titles, spelled with imposing capitals, is forthwith proclaimed 
Conqueror and Dictator over the whole domain. But this 
boasted freedom from " inconsistency " and " obscurity " may 
prove only a poor and temporary reward for the neglect or the 
slaughter of facts and laws that were, at the beginning, most 
loyally arrayed on the other side. Nor is this kind of " paci- 
fication " likely to be more than superficial and short-lived. 
Indeed, as will now briefly be shown, every one of these four 
theoretical constructions of all Reality, when it becomes dis- 
regardful of the legitimate claims of the opposed construc- 
tion, conducts itself in such a way as to suffer arrest and 
legal execution at the hand of epistemology. 

Idealism and Realism, in whatever form presented, are 
always the ontological correlates of certain assured facts and 
laws of human knowledge. We know what warrants both 
these views as to the nature of minds and of things. Indeed, 
the " I know " in which the epistemological problem origi- 
nates in its most presuppositionless form contains within 
itself the perpetual warrant for the truth seized upon and 
expressed by both these theories. But both Idealism and 
Realism, whenever they begin to overlook or to pervert the 
plain significance of the facts that oppose their unrestricted 
extension, become so involved in a sceptical and agnostic 
view of some knowledge as really to destroy the grounds for a 
rational confidence in all knowledge. 

Let us begin with the position of subjective idealism, — 
unassailable so far as it is affirmatory and positive. I know 
my own affections, all the thoughts, feelings, and purposes 
which I call mine. Those objects of my cognition, which are 
called external things, are certainly given to me only as they 
are in consciousness and in my consciousness ; they are, from 



IDEALISM AND REALISM 561 

this point of view, as truly subjective as are the most subjec- 
tive of my own experiences. For my sensations are nothing 
external to my mind ; nor can they be regarded as copies of, 
or impressions derived from anything external. They are, 
positively, nothing but modifications of my sensory conscious- 
ness. And even if a certain qualification called " extensity," 
or undefined "bigness," be allowed to the sensations of certain 
orders, or even to sensations of every order, their inherent 
subjectivity is in no wise altered. Such sensations, however 
qualified extensively, are still my sensations, subjective modi- 
fications of my sensory consciousness. Neither do they lose 
this subjectivity by being combined into manifold so-called 
" sensation-complexes ; " for no potency can be detected in 
mere combination which should, like the philosopher's stone, 
change the baser metal of subjective sensibility into the gold 
of envisaged extra-mental reality. And now if we are at a 
loss to understand how mere subjective modifications of sen- 
suous consciousness can come even to appear as things 
objective, we may introduce either the Kantian theory of 
knowledge, or some other equally idealistic theory ; thus the 
objectivity which things appear to have is itself ascribed to 
the laws of the- activity of my own mind. 

My cognition of objects, no matter how intellectual and 
comprehending it may become, is still a passing phase of 
my consciousness. The realities called " Things " are really 
phenomena in the ever flowing stream of my mental life ; 
they are to me as they appear to me, — pictures in the mind, 
or forms of mental representation. And what is true of those 
objects which at least make the claim to be considered real — 
namely, that they appear concretely in my life of mental 
sense-presentation — is a fortiori true of all conceptual objects. 
The so-called entities and laws of science, so far as they exist 
for me, whether conceived of as immediately appertaining 
to my conscious experience or only as most remotely con- 
nected therewith, are alike only my ideas and thoughts. 

3G 



562 IDEALISM AND REALISM 

Being more abstract than are the perceptions from which 
they spring, they have even less tenable claim to be exempted 
from the universal dictum: Things and their relations and 
their transactions are ideas, — " momenta " in the ever mov- 
ing stream of consciousness. Nor, finally, can this Self, and 
all the higher spiritual existences in which it believes and 
to communion with which it so ardently and persistently as- 
pires, fail of being brought under the same truth. I am to 
myself my own idea, my own conception. Other spirits, 
men, angels, and God, are existent for me, as the flow 
of consciousness, under the constitutional or acquired norms 
of understanding determines momentarily that they shall be. 
" The World is my Idea," — who can resist the logic which 
proves, or the impressiveness of the metaphysics which pro- 
claims, this celebrated dictum? 

So long as subjective idealism states its position in a 
purely affirmative way, and refrains from denial of the other 
aspects and truths of cognition, it commands assent ; because 
it is psychologically defensible. But if not (as is customary) 
in its elementary and positive statements, then in its more 
ulterior and negative developments its case is far differently 
decided at the bar of a judicial epistemology. Grown con- 
ceited with its triumphs in psychology, it attempts a philoso- 
phy of knowledge and a theory of Reality as follows : Nothing 
is, or can be, known as aught but my idea. I am shut in, 
without conceivable means or imagined possibility of escape, 
by the circle of my mental representations. And if you 
allege as existing in fact, or propose as tenable in theory, 
some means of transcending this circle, you allege or propose 
the impossible. " Envisagement, ,, " inference," u faith," — 
what are these, or any other similar terms, but words for 
some actual or fictitious form of the idea ? Can I, in know- 
ing, transcend the consciousness whose peculiar form the 
very process of knowing is ? All concrete cognition is noth- 
ing but appearance ; and that which appears in every cogni- 



IDEALISM AND KEALISM 563 

tive act is nothing but my idea ? How, then, can so-called 
Things be known to me as other than my own ideas ? Or, 
if it must be admitted — albeit most tardily and in surrepti- 
tious and shame-faced fashion — that some extra-mental real- 
ity is, some thing other than my ideas, how can I ever 
hope to know, or even venture to conjecture, what this some- 
thing is, — since what it is to me is ever only my idea ? The 
reduction of my ideas to as much as possible of apparent 
consistency among themselves, and the pursuit of practical 
ends by the problematical means left at my disposal, would 
seem to be the only attainable end of cognition in a case like 
mine. 

We have seen, however, that this subjective idealism, with 
its sceptical or agnostic outcome respecting the real being 
and actual transactions of things, and, indeed, respecting also 
the reality of the soul, is met and disproved, in its negative 
positions, by the psychology and the philosophy of knowledge 
at every point. Its affirmations can, indeed, be pieced to- 
gether so as to afford to a few minds a seductive picture of 
the truth. But its denials can never win their way either 
with the popular, or with the more reflective views upon 
the nature of cognition, and of the Reality in possession of 
which the cognitive soul is placed. The brilliant dialectic 
of Berkeley, and of his exceedingly infrequent later disciples, 
will always find itself wholly unable to cope with the " com- 
mon-sense " of mankind. For although this common-sense 
is no adequate equipment for philosophical pursuits, it cannot 
be flouted at or neglected by any form of philosophical theory. 
That detailed analysis of the nature, the criteria, and the 
" implicates " of all knowledge with which we have attempted 
to answer the epistemological problem, has shown, not only 
the serious defects, but also the complete absurdity of sub- 
jective idealism. All knowledge is, in its very nature trans- 
subjective. Its fundamental affirmation — an affirmation from 
which it never for a single moment, or so much as in one 



564: IDEALISM AND REALISM 

lonely instance, departs — is of the extra-mentally existent. 
Knowledge is not merely an appearance in consciousness of 
ideas ; it is a living commerce with the real being and actual 
transactions of minds and of things. 

Moreover, this form of idealism cannot state its positions, 
cannot even open its mouth to proclaim or to whisper them 
forth, without confession Qf its own complete absurdity. Its 
very profession is such a confession. For its profession is an 
appeal to some standard of truth that exists, realized somehow 
and somewhere, outside the flow of the ideas in the stream of the 
individual consciousness. And if, at first, this standard is con- 
ceived of as the simultaneous and concurrent flow of other 
ideas, in other streams of consciousness than my own, even 
this is a confession of faith in an eztra-ment&lly existent world 
that is not merely my idea. But the confession implied in 
the profession of subjective idealism is always something 
much more than this. For it is only through my cognition 
of a system of things, " not-self" that I come even to suspect 
the existence of a standard of truth. All the earliest devel- 
opment of knowledge, as has been sufficiently emphasized, 
is an unceasing commerce of Self with Things, known as 
mutually dependent and interrelated. It is as part of a real 
world, cognized only on such terms as prevent my consider- 
ing it to be merely my mental representation, that I have 
come to know even my ideas as my own. The very nature of 
my knowledge, therefore, inevitably compels me to the con- 
tradictory of the solipsistic position ; it compels the conclu- 
sion, " The world is not merely my idea." It is all, always, 
known to me as something other and more than my idea. 
In vain does the advocate of this kind of idealism, when im- 
paled upon the spear-points of an array of epistemological 
facts, strive to extricate himself and retain enough of life 
in his dialectic to carry him either forward or backward. 
Forward he cannot go, for the facts are invincible. Back- 
ward he cannot retreat to the idealistic position from which he 



IDEALISM AND REALISM 565 

set out ; the facts follow and rout him even there. They show 
that while the objects of every form and degree of knowledge 
may all properly be considered as ideas (in the most general 
sense of this word, as appearances in consciousness), they 
must all be considered also as not mere ideas, as trans- 
subjective, as really existent minds and things. Nor will the 
continuance of the distressing ambiguity in the Kantian use 
of the word " objective " save the metaphysics of subjective 
idealism from the attacks of the realism which epistemology 
warrants. 

Common-sense Realism, too, in its naive and homely fashion, 
affirms certain important truths which are confirmed by the 
conclusions of a critical theory of knowledge. When, how- 
ever, it contradicts or overlooks those facts and laws which 
are emphasized by its rival theory of reality, it is opposed and 
confuted by epistemology. If this form of realism never be- 
comes quite so palpably absurd as does subjective idealism, its 
salvation is perhaps due to the fact that what is " common- 
sense " always feels certain constraints from which more scho- 
lastic and exquisitely refined speculations are apt to fly free. 
The cruder realism takes its original position in the uncritical 
affirmation of a knowledge of things ; both that they are and 
what they are, it is assumed, without asking permission of 
psychology and philosophy, everybody knows. That things 
do really exist, extra'-mentally and in independence of me and 
of all human cognition, seems to the cognitive judgment of the 
average unreflecting consciousness an indisputable proposition. 
How they can exist otherwise, in respect of their characteris- 
tics and modes of behavior, than they are known to exist, is 
something of which no conception can easily be formed by 
such a consciousness. This voice, with its proclamation that 
things really are and what they are, seems to come, not from 
the depths of consciousness as the guaranty of an objectively 
determined idea, but straight from the things themselves ; as 
rays of sunlight flow from the sun, or rays of heat from the 



566 IDEALISM AND REALISM 

fire. And it is to the things themselves — which are never to 
be thought of as in my consciousness, but as standing ready- 
made over there — that the confident appeal is taken in 
case any question arises concerning the truth of particular 
cognitions. 

The physical and natural sciences fitly espouse and maintain 
this positive datum of common-sense realism. But for them 
the things that most really are, are really not the things that 
are seen and temporal. The real things are rather the more 
primary and elemental factors of things, and the unchanging 
physico-chemical laws which are supposed to control the com- 
binations, dissolutions, and changing relations of these factors. 
As to the epistemological principles involved in this assump- 
tion, however, " scientific realism " maintains the same positive 
attitude toward external reality as that which characterizes 
the realism of the " plain man's " consciousness. At this stage 
in the philosophy of Reality, the particular forms given to the 
construction of the concrete realities are not the important and 
determinative considerations. Both common-sense realism 
and scientific realism regard things as extra-mentally existent, 
— ready-made, as it were, and independent, for their existence 
and their transactions between themselves, of all human know- 
ing. This ontological assumption alone it is which warrants 
modern physical-science in drawing, with such lofty confidence 
and minuteness of details, the picture of the evolution of 
Reality, when as yet there was no eye to see, no ear to hear, 
no hand to handle, and no human mind to perceive, conceive, 
or comprehend. The same assumption it is which encourages 
the prediction as to what will be, not only next year or next 
century, as respects important physical affairs, and without 
regarding the cognitive attitude of the whole race of men (let 
them perish, meantime, of plague or war), but when the earth 
and the sun shall be even as the moon now is, — burned-out 
coals. Nor would all the ideas and all the deeds of will, of all 
the race of men, change by a single iota the statement of the 



IDEALISM AND REALISM 567 

great physical laws which sun and moon and all the stars 
unceasingly obey. And we all, even the most pronounced of 
Berkeleian idealists or avowed solipsistic sceptics, listen with 
reverence to this descriptive history and its predictions for the 
remotest future. Even Schopenhauer is compelled to prove 
his proposition of the illusory character of intellectual concep- 
tion as to the real nature of tilings by referring to things as 
though they really existed and actually behaved after the pat- 
terns set by the conceptions of modern physical science. 

This form of realism, when allowance is made for its crudely 
figurative way of speaking, and so long as its positions are 
affirmative of the positive, cognitive attitude of men toward 
Reality is incontestably in the right as judged by a critical 
epistemology. It regards, indeed, the operation of cognition 
in a way which is, after all, not so much intrinsically erroneous 
as it is one-sided and inadequate. The apparent instantaneous- 
ness, and the predominatingly passive character, of much of 
our perception of things by the senses leads to an over-emphasis 
of one side of the cognitive process. Thus cognition comes to 
be spoken of, and even thought about, as though it were merely 
a copying-off, or a receiving of impressions from, the ready- 
made things. But the most nai've realism is ordinarily ready 
to admit that this is not precisely what its confidence guaran- 
tees ; and whether it makes the admission or not, the admis- 
sion must be insisted upon in its behalf. Thus the most 
uninformed man is brought to consider what every scientific 
man has already for a long time known, that cognizing things 
through the senses is somehow a relative affair, and involves 
other characteristic activity than that of the extra-mental 
things. But what is insisted upon is this : Things exist, not 
simply while, or as, they are known by us ; but all the while, 
and in independence of the voluntary or involuntary exercise 
of human cognitive faculty. What is also further insisted upon 
is that their characteristic modes of being and behavior belong 
somehow to them, and are not simply the resultant of the forms 



568 IDEALISM AND REALISM 

of the functioning of any man's mind. Things have their own 
qualities, their own laws, their own forms of life ; and they 
have been, and will be, in this possession, obeying these regu- 
lations, and enjoying and exercising this life, whether we 
continue to think, and feel, and will, with reference to them, 
or not. It is some such ontological affirmations as these which 
are needed to satisfy the objective consciousness of the realist, 
rather than a crude and easily disproved theory of knowledge 
which, whether with respect to the secondary or to the primary 
qualities of matter, considers the perception of things as a 
species of photography. But the truth of this realistic assump- 
tion has been provided for, and most amply guaranteed, by 
our critical study of epistemology. Even the practical instinct 
which makes men value things, only if they may not lightly 
regard them as the mere creatures of their ideating activities, 
but as somehow raised above men and set where the whole 
human race cannot destroy or greatly defame them, has also 
been satisfied. Provision has even been made by the later 
developments of epistemological theory for the aesthetical and 
the religious view of the nature of physical Reality. 

When, however, the realism either of common-sense or of 
physical science denies the existence, the efficacy, or the value, 
of that which it is pleased to consider unreal, because ideal, it 
meets with stern rebuke and inflexible opposition from epis- 
temology. If it takes, as is usually the case, a materialistic 
turn, it not only runs great risk of sinking into the slime, from 
the ethical point of view, and of dragging down the subject of 
all ideas with it ; but it also most unequivocally makes itself 
absurd in the eyes of a critical student of cognition. For now 
ready-made things have become exalted to the place of suprem- 
acy ; they are the alone indubitably real ; by their behavior 
they account for all knowledge — not only for its sensuous con- 
tent, considered as of varying intensity, time-rate, and qualita- 
tive complexity, but even for the combining activity which 
shows itself in the unity of the content, for the comparing 



IDEALISM AND REALISM 569 

activity which results in the content being teleologically con- 
structed, and for the metaphysical faith, intuition (or whatever 
you please to call it) which makes the content known as an 
existent Thing. Or to put the case negatively ; — now the 
existence, the effective agency, the ideating and relating signif- 
icance, of the subject of cognition is denied. The idea is made 
of no account in the world of reality. Things would not only 
be, but they would have been all that they now are, if no 
mental reaction of any kind had ever taken place. This mental 
reaction, the idea, is itself naught but an insignificant and fleet- 
ing phenomenon, an " epz-phenomenon." And as its courage 
grows, such one-sided realism may go on with its negations, 
and think to advance from the conquest of the microcosmos, in 
the name of ready-made and all-creative things, to an attack 
upon the ideal in the macrocosmos. Then its philosophy affirms 
that no potency or profit from the Idea can be found anywhere 
in the great Universe. Things, in the large, are only what 
physico-chemical science knows them to be ; and to speak of 
ideas being u immanent in things " is worse than merely an- 
thropomorphic imaging ; for it is anthropomorphism of a con- 
fused and yet pretentious character. The World is a piece of 
mechanism ; the Ideal is but the artistic fancy, the unrealiz- 
able dream, of hyper-assthetic and over-exquisite minds. 

But such extensions of the negative positions of realistic 
students of nature, or of common minds that lack ethical and 
sesthetical impulses as well as philosophic insight, are forbidden 
by the theory of knowledge. For you can never get to things, 
whether in the particular or in the large, — to that single Thing, 
standing so silently over there, and challenging your right to 
deny its existence, or to a World undergoing the most elabo- 
rate system of natural evolution, — except in reliance upon the 
cogency, the validity, and the significance of the idea. Here all 
the positive considerations of subjective idealism negative the 
denials of this form of realism. Particular things are given to 
me only in and through modifications of my consciousness ; 



570 IDEALISM AND EEALISM 

and if the much abused term " idea " be employed for every 
modification of consciousness, however complex and saturated 
with feeling and voluntary activity, then it is incontestable 
truth that all things are known to me as my ideas. The bridge 
which leads over to the realm of the extra-mental Reality is 
itself a mental affair, — some factor, or " moment," or phase 
of an idea. Even if the chasm between mind and things be 
spanned by two kinds of structures, like the " sacred bridge " 
and the bridge for common people at Nikko, still mystical 
envisagement and matter-of-fact inference are alike in being 
phases of the idea. 

Nor can the realist guarantee the existence and inherent 
qualities of his ready-made things, without accepting in good 
faith the work done by his own cognitive faculty ; and this 
faculty, considered as a complex form of functioning, reaches 
its supremely self-confident architectonic, as it were, in the 
construction and validating as reality of the idea of the Self. 
For what I do know, even if all other knowledge fail, is that 
I am actively and consciously striving for the realization of 
my own ideas. The one being, then, which I most certainly 
and unequivocally know, is a being whose very essence consists 
in having, and in acting under the influence of, numerous 
immanent ideas. Moreover, our critical examination of the 
epistemological problem has shown that, when the object of 
cognition is not the Self, but is rather not-selves (even in the 
form of those things which seem at first sight most completely 
unlike the Self), cognition is possible only on the general ad- 
mission that to the so-called categories is given an objective 
validity. But, primarily, by "categories" we mean simply 
those forms of the arising, the self-relating, and the develop- 
ment of our own ideas, which we believe to be shared by all 
men and hold to belong to the unchanging constitution of the 
mind. Only, then, as things get ideal construction have they 
any existence for man. Yet further, it has become more and 
more apparent as the course of critical examination has led 



IDEALISM AND REALISM 571 

to the subtler and more profound truths of the teleology, and 
of the ethical and aesthetical " momenta " of knowledge, that 
the validating of these categories for the objects of ordinary 
and of scientific knowledge always implies that things are, 
in their connected real being and systematic actual transac- 
tions, analogous to the Self. 

When, then, any form of realism, starting out with the 
assumption of the ready-made being of things, and relying 
upon the validity of human cognitions of things for its justifi- 
cation, denies the cogency, the objective validity and signifi- 
cance of ideas (as this word is used by the rival theory of 
idealism), it ends by destroying the very foundations on which 
it undertook to build its theory of Reality. It has taken all 
sense out of its boasted common -sense ; it has destroyed all 
science in its excessive zeal for the supremacy of an uncritical 
physical science. " A theory of Eeality " it cannot construct ; 
for to theorize about reality implies that reality is more than 
such a form of realism admits. Theory of Reality implies that 
Reality is itself in fact ideal. 

It appears incontrovertible, then, that any ontological 
theory which will not consent speedily to undermine its own 
foundations by assuming a palpably false epistemological 
theory, must accept and, if possible, harmonize the positive 
truths of both Idealism and Realism. It must also reject the 
errors into which both fall when they deny each other's rights, 
and set themselves up for complete and satisfactory exponents 
of the real being and actual transactions of things. Such a 
harmonious theory of Reality involves, first, the admission of 
the truth that reality interpenetrates and supports all our life 
of the ideas, as they succeed each other in the flowing stream 
of consciousness. The subject of these ideas is real ; and he 
is a part of, a living element or moment in the great life of 
Reality. Man's ideas are not mere ideas, — whenever they 
become a knowledge of objects. This flux of my ideas is 
never to be explained as, for indeed it never really is, a sue- 



572 IDEALISM AND REALISM 

cession of mental representations that may be considered 
apart from the real being and actual transactions of things 
that are not-my-ideas. Psychology, as treated by certain 
psychologists, may pretend that the case is so; it may 
properly enough define its own business as that of dealing 
with ideas, or " states of consciousness, as such." But cogni- 
tive states of consciousness are never presented for examina- 
tion as mere states of consciousness, as simply the subject's 
ideas. They are ever presented as though reality were 
admitted into, were actually there, in human consciousness. 
In all the development of sense-perception, including that ob- 
scure growth of knowledge which compels the mind to differ- 
ence in a radical way between the Self, as the subject of ideas, 
and the body considered even as the remotely inferred physico- 
chemical changes of the brain, this admitted reality is satisfied 
only if the claims of both idealism and realism are admitted. 
I am real, and things are real. The relation established be- 
tween us in knowledge is not the denial, but the everlastingly 
firm and incontestably true affirmation, of both realities. In 
knowing that I am real, — in realizing the idea that I am, — 
I am in a most firm and undeniable connection with Reality. 
The Life of the really existent World flows into the life of 
my ideas. This is the witness of my cognitive faculty. This 
is the last criterion and the highest significance of cognition 
itself. 

But the reconciliation of the valid claims of both Idealism 
and Realism requires, second, the inclusion of the world 
of extra-mentally existent things within the Idea. Or, 
rather, — to state the same truth in a less abstract way, — 
that system consisting of the real beings and actual transac- 
tions of things, which common-sense and scientific realism 
regard as self-existent, ready-made, and independent of all 
ideas, must itself be conceived of in ideal terms. By a sub- 
jective idealism, the plainest facts and most obvious principles 
of cognition are contradicted ; it is made impossible to justify 



IDEALISM AXD REALISM 573 

or even to frame any consistent and tenable theory of Reality. 
Such an idealism, when once it has, by its brilliant but shallow 
dialectic, disposed of all structures which afford any means 
of passage from the conscious idea to that which exists extra- 
mentally and in independence of the idea, attempts in vain for 
itself an escape to the other side. Poor bird ! its wings are 
self-clipped ; and it can only flutter and expire in the sight of 
those onlookers whose very reality it feels so sensitively, 
although it has often enough reduced them, too, to its own 
ideas. But if our minds keep faith with the most valid 
conclusions of a critical epistemolo gy, we not only may, but 
we do and we must, cross from the domain of psychology, 
from the realm of the mere idea, into the great World of the 
really Existent. But this is done with the knowledge that It, 
too, is a realm reigned over by ideas. For just as ideas of 
things are not mere ideas, and the scientific and philosophic 
conceptions of Reality are not mere products of thought and 
imagination, so things are not mere unideal things, and the 
total Reality is not a bare existence, but a realized Idea. 

That some such reconciliation of Realism and Idealism as 
this is demanded by a true theory of knowledge, there can be 
no doubt. The elaboration and defence of its details must 
be handed over by Epistemology to other appropriate philo- 
sophical disciplines. 



CHAPTER XX 

DUALISM AND MONISM 

r T" v HE questions in debate between the various forms of 
-*- Idealism and of Realism concern those qualifications 
which shall be assigned to the different classes of the objects 
of cognition. The problem which they discuss may be " 
stated as follows : How shall we mentally represent the 
inner and real nature of those beings which to the cognitive 
faculty appear as vastly differentiated and separable into many 
kinds ? The answer which epistemology suggests to meta- 
physics, as the only answer compatible with the most assured 
epistemological facts, is that all beings, both Selves and Things, 
must be considered as both real and ideal. In some way, then, 
the theory of reality must be answerable to the theory of 
knowledge for a reconciliation of the valid claims of conscious 
ideas and of real things. But connected with this meta- 
physical problem is another, which may be described as the 
problem of the ultimate number of classes of objects to which 
the qualifications of reality shall be distributed, as it were. 
Are all real beings capable of being classed as One Being ; 
or must the ultimate number of really different beings which 
refuse to be classified together be considered as two, or even 
more ? This inquiry, too, of course, raises an ontological 
problem ; its elaborate and well reasoned solution belongs to 
general philosophy, to the philosophy of Nature and of Mind, 
and perhaps especially to the philosophy of religion. But 
epistemology offers certain suggestions looking toward its 
better understanding and more satisfactory treatment. The 
conclusions which we have taken such pains to reach cannot 



DUALISM AND MONISM 575 

be indifferent upon all the subjects debated between the 
different forms of Dualism and Monism. Indeed, only such 
a theory of reality as shall reconcile the valid claims of 
both sides to this contest comports with a sound theory of 
knowledge. 

There are two sets of terms, however, which are, almost of 
necessity, so ambiguously used in the customary discussions 
of Dualism and Monism, that without coming to some sort 
of preliminary reckoning with these terms, all treatment of 
this subject is mere logomachy. One of these comprises 
certain terms of number ; the other comprises certain terms 
of relation. In general, terms of number and terms of rela- 
tion, above all other terms, lend themselves to ambiguity 
when the subjects to which they are applied are complex and 
capable of a living development. To illustrate from a classic 
dispute in a field where one form of the conflict between the 
two rival theories we are about to examine takes place : All 
are agreed that, in some meaning of the word, the soul of 
every man is a unity. " I am one, and you are another," is a 
declaration so indisputable that it cannot be questioned with- 
out admitting it. " I am I," and " thou art thou," — it is 
upon a common admission of the validity of such declarations 
that all intercourse, even the fiercest battle over the meaning 
of so-called " double consciousness," is based. But in what 
sense am I " one," and you " another," and both of us, con- 
sidered together, to be called two, or perchance one, as the 
case may be ? The answer to this question should carry with 
it a final adjustment of the disputed use of certain terms of 
number. Kant's well-known refutation of the "transcen- 
dental parallogism " was valid against such a unity of the 
soul as certain theologians, in their desire to demonstrate for 
it a non posse mori, had attributed to it. But in denying that 
the soul is self-known as a real unity, Kant himself was as 
fanciful and far away from the truth of the facts as were the 
theologians he confuted. 



576 DUALISM AND MONISM 

Thus, too, even in speaking of the body as one, whether we 
contrast the body and the soul as making two in number, or 
fuse both into some form of a unity that includes both but 
really is neither, our psycho-physical mathematics certainly 
stands in great need of careful criticism. Two beings are 
not constituted a real unity, in any use of the numerical idea 
which is fitly applicable, simply by calling them " one " in some 
other quite different meaning for the same word. Nor are two 
beings, which are actually bound together into a unity of living 
connection — a ceaseless action and interaction — made really 
to be " two " disconnected beings by pointing out that they 
are, in another meaning of the same words, two rather than 
one. In what sense " one," or " two," or " many " ? this is 
certainly a question which can never properly be lost entirely 
out of sight in discussing the claims of dualism and monism. 
The same thinker may well enough be both a dualist and a 
monist in his theoretical views of body and soul, of matter 
and spirit, of things and Self, of finite and Absolute, accord- 
ing as he allows himself to shift his conceptions under these 
terms of number. For the body itself is really one ; or it is 
really a considerable number, an infinite host, according to 
one's point of view. It is one with the mind, or just as 
clearly another than the mind, so that the two are quite dis- 
tinct realities, according to one's meaning for the term 
" unity." All unities and all dualities are alike mysterious 
and, ultimately considered, inexplicable, if only one chooses 
to look at them in that way. I am one, or twofold, or mani- 
fold in my being, whether considered as a Self or as a soul. 
My body, too, is one, or manifold, or only a most inconstant 
flux, a mere temporary and ever shifting channel for a small 
part of the stream of Nature to flow through, if in any one of 
several different but equally true ways it pleases the observer 
to regard it. 

Certain ambiguities in the use of terms of relation also 
attach themselves to those conceptions which are customarily 



DUALISM AXD MOXISM 577 

insisted upon by the dualistic and monistic theories of Real- 
ity. These ambiguities are not easily separated from the 
foregoing; indeed, both classes of misconceptions originate 
and develop in the same soil. It is only as they fall also 
under the category of relation that terms of number can be 
applied to any being or to any class of existences. In the 
case of the highest, most well-certified and yet complex of 
unities, — namely, the Self as the object of self-consciousness 
and of recognitive memory, — the unity attributed to it de- 
pends upon the character of the relations under which it is 
proposed to bring a variety of phenomena. All the different 
psychic activities and states may be theoretically brought 
together and attached to the conception of one Self, because 
they are all known and remembered as related to each other 
in the stream of consciousness, and are assignable (which 
implies a form of relation) to a single subject of them all. 
But two classes of relations, and the words we are compelled 
to use in order to express them, are especially liable to am- 
biguity. These are the relations which are conceived of 
under terms either of dependence in being or of interdepend- 
ent action. How much, and what kind of dependence of one 
being upon other beings is consistent with a valid claim to be 
itself considered as a unity of independent being ? On the con- 
trary, what amount of reciprocal determination between two 
apparently separate beings warrants us in proclaiming that 
the apparent twofold nature of their being is to be resolved 
into a more fundamental oneness of being? There are no 
a priori means for the solution of such problems ; and, 
indeed, any solution which may be offered for the concrete 
cases in which such problems present themselves, depends 
for its validity, and even for its intelligibility, very much 
upon the use which the proposed solution makes of the 
above-mentioned terms. 

If a total independence of all other existences were neces- 
sary for any being, in order that it might claim the individu- 

37 



578 DUALISM AND MONISM 

ality and the unity which the word " one " implies, then no 
particular existences could ever satisfy such a claim ; then 
no particular existences could really exist as separate unities, 
in any sense of the words. Then all Being would be One ; 
the many would not be ; and the complete simplicity and 
complete uselessness of the Eleatic view of Reality would 
justify itself. Yet how often do we hear of demands virtually 
made upon the human soul that it shall show its independ- 
ency of matter in general, of brain-states in particular, or 
even of its own constitution and laws of development, if it 
would lay valid claim to be called " one " and " real " in its 
being. If, on the other hand, the lack of any particular 
kind of connection, or method of action between two beings 
is a sufficient warrant for considering them as wholly dis- 
connected entities, then the question arises : How shall the 
Unity of one World be brought about by the mere presence in 
existence of a vast multitude of such disconnected entities ? 
Once more, if the belief or the knowledge of men, that all the 
separate and independent beings of the Universe, both minds 
and things, are bound together into an ideal Unity, is to be the 
warrant for denying the reality of the fundamental differen- 
tiations in which human cognitive experience takes its rise, 
how shall any diversity be left, out of which to construct this 
ideal Unity ? The detailed answer to these and similar in- 
quiries is an elaborate system of metaphysics. But the 
answers already won for the related questions in epistemol- 
ogy furnish a light which is both a guide and a warning. 
They guide the mind in a strictly critical path for the deter- 
mination of the rights of both dualism and monism, in their 
use of terms of number and of terms of relation, as applied to 
real beings ; and they warn the mind against being deceived 
by the sophisms concealed in these terms, especially in the 
form of assumptions and points of view contradictory of the 
facts and principles of cognition. 

The positive claims from which both the dualistic and the 



DUALISM AND MONISM 579 

monistic theories of Keality take their rise accord with the 
plainest facts and most obvious principles of cognition. Dual- 
ism begins in the recognized differentiation, the cognized 
opposition of Self and Things. As has already been pointed 
out, the one indispensable form of duality, so to speak, is an 
actualized distinction without which even the conception of 
knowledge is impossible ; it is the distinction between sub- 
ject and object. But this distinction is emphasized and set, 
with especial firmness and irresistible strength, into experi- 
ence, when the object of cognition is some thing. There, set 
over against me, and by no possible action of my will, or stress 
of my desire, or aberration of my intellect, is that which is not- 
me. This often repeated experience of that which is other 
than the being I am, and yet, since it is my object, capable of 
being reckoned in relation with me, makes an indestructible 
dualism of the sum-total of experience. I am one, and it is 
one ; I and it are two, and not one. For although it is, as 
object, in my consciousness, it is there on such terms as pre- 
vent its fusing with my Self, through the process of cogni- 
tion, into a unity. However like myself it may be conceived 
of as being, and however intimate and constant the connec- 
tion between us, still It and I are two separate and inde- 
pendent beings. We are separate and independent, because 
the very terms of our acquaintanceship, so to speak, are such 
as to show that we actually can separate, and yet each retain 
its own existence. I continue to live as a Self, after this 
particular thing ceases to be my object. It continues to be 
a thing, after I have withdrawn from it my cognitive activity. 
Nor is the case altered, so far as the essentials are con- 
cerned, when the particular thing which is perceived, or 
imagined, or thought, is one's own body, — whether as a 
totality, or as some particular portion or special series of 
bodily functions. My body is mine, to be sure ; and thus it 
is a thing in which I am particularly interested, and with 
which I have a more intimate acquaintance, in some respects 



580 DUALISM AND MONISM 

at least, than with other things. As to a theoretical or actual 
dependence upon its structure and functions for the life of 
cognition, we are not at this moment concerned to inquire. 
But when I make any external part of this body an object of 
sense-perception, or when any internal part forces itself as 
an object upon my most acute attention, it appears to me 
upon the same terms as those upon which other things 
appear. It is a separable and independent being ; it, too, is 
seen as colored extension, heard as resounding, felt as hard 
or smooth, cool or warm, as something other than me ; and 
so, as making with me a sort of pair, or duality ; I and my 
body are two instead of simply one. Even more obviously 
true are the facts to which the dualistic view of reality 
appeals when it acquires that form of science and specialized 
erudition which modern histology and physiology have im- 
parted to it. My brain and I, who think and argue about 
this brain and its relations to consciousness, are during all 
this process, with its termination in an alleged judgment of 
cognition, two quite separable and distinct beings, /imagine 
it ; I think about it ; I draw conclusions which affirm either 
a monistic theory, or a theory of psycho-physical parallelism, 
or some other theory respecting its relations to me, — only 
as we are considered to be two rather than one. 

Moreover, the more refined and well certified the science of 
the constitution and functions of the body of man becomes, 
the more definitively is it classified with those not-selves which 
are things, and which together with the cognizing Self make 
a dual world, rather than a world that has only beings capable 
of being identified as belonging to one class. This object of 
our modern " cerebral science," so-called, must be imagined as 
(and wherever it is perceived, is actually known to be) some- 
what spread out in space, — weight so much, colored so, with 
separable gross masses arranged in such an order. Put under 
the microscope, it is further known in precisely the same terms 
as those which characterize the tissue of a plant, or of some 



DUALISM AND MONISM 581 

one of the animals which is farthest removed from correla- 
tion or correspondence with the self-conscious Self. Analyzed 
in the laboratory, it is so much water, so much of phospho- 
rized fats, etc. And if its behavior could be inspected when it 
is most intimately and influentially related to human cognitive 
activity, this behavior, and the being that thus behaves, would 
doubtless have to be classified with amoeboid bodies in general 
rather than with the self-conscious Self. Now, science cannot 
overcome or diminish this dualism. It is there, in the really 
existent, and unconquerably persistent. The chemico-physical 
investigation of cerebral substance, or of living bodies gen- 
erally, widens and deepens instead of narrowing or filling in 
the gap between the self-conscious knower and any portion of 
the world of not-self. And psycho-physical investigation, 
whether it puts us into possession of any new truth or only 
renders the more definite certain quantitative and quali- 
tative relations already recognized, has no other effect upon 
this natural dualism. Its very field of investigation can be 
defined and explored only upon the assumption that the more 
or less uniform relations of two beings are the subject of 
investigation. The moment that the Ego's conscious life of 
cognition is identified with the chemico-physical changes in the 
cerebral substance^ the whole field of psycho-physics is with- 
drawn from the view of the scientific mind. 

Still further, what is true in the microcosm, man, is also 
true in the macrocosm, the Universe at large. For every 
human Self, this duality is a necessary fact of experience, a 
permanent and fundamental truth to which the actual state 
of the case, as it were, must always correspond. The most 
definite and indisputable thing which I know about the world 
of the non-self is this : There are other selves existing on 
terms with themselves and with the total World of real beings 
and actual transactions, similar to those terms on which I 
know myself to exist. It is of the very nature of selfhood that 
this duality should persist. Each one of these other selves, of 



582 DUALISM AND MONISM 

* 
my so-called " fellow men," is inevitably a consistent dualist, in 
practice and in theory. For each one there is existent, on the 
one hand, the Self that knows and feels itself and plans for 
itself, and the world of other beings that are not-self, both 
minds and things. This must always be so, as long as self- 
conscious selves form any part of the sum-total of existence. 
This distinction, as valid in reality, no religious or other mys- 
tical experience, and no philosophic or otherwise esoteric 
doctrine, can at all invalidate. The attempt, even in thought, 
to annihilate this dualism of being which belongs to the essence 
of selfhood, can succeed only if all differentiation of selves 
be itself destroyed. Absorption of the many selves into the 
One Self, into the Absolute, is conceivable only in a negative 
way. It is the mere, the otherwise undefinable negation of 
my being, and of all other beings now known as my fellow 
selves. It is also the negation of all things, as they are now 
known to them and to me ; since, both for them and for me, 
knowledge of things is only conceivable as a commerce in 
which selves take part, as dependent upon their relations to 
that larger and other Self. 

It is, however, when dualism begins its denials that the 
corrective facts and truths of a monistic view of man and of 
the world must be invoked against it. As a rule, these 
denials make use of terms of number and terms of relation 
in a misleading or defective manner. Thus in guarding 
against a too hasty or too strict unification of seemingly 
diverse phenomena, in one meaning of the words, the dualistic 
hypothesis may deny all possibility of any kind of unification. 
It may thus destroy the unity, in reality, of man and of the 
world in which man's place is set. The motif for such an 
extreme of dualism may arise in any one of several ways. 
But it is not the task of epistemology to give to the dualistic 
hypothesis a thorough critical handling. In certain of its 
several windings, however, the theory of knowledge easily 
follows, overtakes, and confutes it. This is especially true of 



DUALISM AND MONISM 583 

that form of dualism which makes of body and mind two 
unrelated kinds of beings (to use the Kantian phrase, when 
considered as phenomena realitatis) by first breaking off all 
actual connection between the two main classes of psychoses. 
We refer again, of course, to the theory of psycho-physical 
parallelism, when it has taken the form of a consistent and 
thoroughgoing ontology. This is the favorite modern form 
of an exhausted and barren mediaeval metaphysics arrayed in 
meretricious garb so as the better to coquette with science. 
This theory makes such a duality of body and mind that 
neither can influence, determine, or causally affect the other. 
The old-fashioned theological way of putting the case was 
this : body and mind cannot act on each other, for they are 
separated by " the whole diameter of being." It had a claim 
to respectability, for it designed to further the interests of the 
human soul. Such a claim to respectability is quite lacking 
to the present doctrine of psycho-physical parallelism ; and a 
critical examination of the nature, origin, and growth of 
knowledge has shown that such a separation of the nature of 
man cannot be maintained. 

Experience is without doubt one, — some kind of a unity. 
It is, also, without doubt, such a kind of unity as requires 
the combined action of Self and of Things. But all other 
things influence, act upon, or causally affect (one may choose 
what terms one pleases to express the truth of the actual 
relation) the Self, so far as experience and empirical science 
can safely go, only as they influence, act upon, or causally 
affect the body. That the human body is bound into the 
world of physical beings and events, and so constitutes, in 
some valid meaning of the words, a part of this unity of the 
World, cannot be denied without denying all possibility of 
knowing what the body is, — and, indeed, all possibility of 
thinking or talking about it as " body." This particular or- 
ganism exists only as a part of the sum-total of things, as one 
among many other organic and inorganic beings, in the Unity 



584 DUALISM AND MONISM 

of the one World. It is, then, only through the body, so far as 
any science of relations to the complex system of things can be 
framed or even conceived of, that I, as a conscious and cogni- 
tive soul, am united with the world. Mystical and occult forms 
of connection established between Reality and my Self, there 
may be ; at present we are not concerned to affirm or to deny 
the possibility of this. But there is no science of the relations 
which the Ego can sustain, as a cognizing subject, to the real 
being and actual transactions of things, that does not validate 
itself, in the last resort, by an appeal to the changes produced 
by these things within the human physical organism. Tele- 
pathy, spiritualism (in the more vulgar meaning of the 
word), occult religions, and other forms of alleged communi- 
cation, may be allowed whatever rights they can make good ; 
but both in the work-a-day life and in all the established 
science of man, it is through his physical organism that his 
conscious Ego is related to the world of physical beings and 
physical events. 

Now it follows, most incontestably, as it seems to us, that 
to deny a further and essential unification of body and mind, 
as a system of interacting beings, is completely to cut the 
mind off from the world of things. It is to convert the 
psychic existence and psychic development of man into an 
unreal and ghostly affair. Here am I, in the unity of my one 
experience, seemingly aware, with great intensity and perfect 
clearness of conviction, of my own dual existence. I, indeed, 
never completely identify my Self with my body or with any 
part of it ; much less do I fail to regard the remainder of the 
world of things as having another being than myself. But 
that I am in actual living relations with this body, determining 
not only its grosser movements but its more refined and subtle 
changes, in dependence upon my ideas, feelings, and volitions ; 
that I am constantly being determined in these ideas, feel- 
ings, and volitions by its grosser movements and more subtle 
changes ; and that I am thus united with it into the oneness 



DUALISM AND MONISM 585 

of complete human being, and through it, am connected with 
the Unity of the World of things, — of all this neither com- 
mon-sense nor science seems to leave us in doubt. For the 
development of coguitive experience itself is bound up with 
such assumptions ; and the truth of the same assumptions is, 
in turn, illustrated and made valid by the content of cognition 
in all the development of experience. To deny such a unity 
of body and mind, and of the mind with the world of things 
through the body, by invalidating the reality of the connec- 
tions which experience establishes between the two, is virtu- 
ally to deny the possibility of all knowledge of the body and 
of all other things. What strange bed-fellows does this 
meaningless denial bring together here! For a theory of 
psycho-physical parallelism which has been conceived and 
bred in the interests of a science of physical things, and 
which is exquisitely sensitive toward physical and biological 
formulas, has fallen into the embrace of a sceptical and 
agnostic idealism. 

This modern extreme of dualism, however, when applied 
to the larger World of Reality, shows plain signs of a ten- 
dency to lapse into the positions of the most old-fashioned 
theological Manichasism. The world of things that are not 
human, the system of animals and plants that are graded by 
natural science as below man, is, nevertheless, so full of the 
tokens of mind that the theory of psycho-physical parallelism 
cannot consistently limit itself to the dual phenomena of hu- 
man life. Even non-living things are not wanting in similar 
tokens of the mind that is in them. The theory, when applied 
beyond the limits of man's dual nature, must, therefore, resort 
to a universal u mind-stuff " which runs its career as a system 
(sic) or an incoherent jumble of psychic " momenta," parallel 
with those suggestive movements in space which all things 
are wont to undergo. Between these two, the matter and the 
" mind-stuff," no commerce or actual connection can be allowed. 
Neither is it allowable — at least as some of the advocates of 



586 DUALISM AND MONISM 

this form of dualism are ready to maintain — that we should 
unite all the psychic " momenta " by theoretically connecting 
them with some one subject, a so-called Infinite Mind. It is 
thus assumed that the human imagination can compass, in a 
way to guarantee its possible reality, the conception of an 
everywhere present but disparate " Mind-stun ," or a diffuse 
and impersonal Spirit ; but it cannot be trusted to construct 
the consistent idea of an Absolute Personal Self. But it is 
chiefly the business of the philosophy of religion, or of a sys- 
tem of general metaphysics, to inquire into the mythology of 
the " mind-stuff " theory of the world, — a shamefaced way 
of providing for gods many and lords many, without courage 
to invoke the Spirit of One Living God. We are satisfied 
now with maintaining that such a form of dualism gets its 
rebuke from a critical doctrine of the nature, origin, and va- 
lidity of knowledge. To admit an infinite number of psy- 
chic centres, each of which is really cut off from connection 
with the being and the transactions of the system of things, 
is to destroy the unity of the real World, both as it is known 
to us and as it is existent in independence of our knowledge. 
In opposition to such a dualism, almost any monistic theory 
which makes a fair show of comprehending all the phenomena 
as an interconnected system will always have a decided ad- 
vantage. And this advantage does not grow simply out of 
the tendency of reason to unify and ground all experience in 
as few principles as possible ; it grows also out of the fact that 
the form of dualism which it opposes has so little standing 
with the phenomena of cognition. 

It is not necessary for our present purpose to follow the 
course of the monistic theory of mind and things through the 
details of its positive or negative conclusions. What could be 
said both in defence and in criticism has, perhaps, already been 
sufficiently indicated. In its attempt to maintain the incom- 
parable unity in reality of the self-conscious human Soul, it 
has on its side all those practical and theoretical considera- 



DUALISM AND MONISM 587 

tions which are most potent to assist such an attempt. The 
very nature of knowledge is an impregnable fortress for 
a monistic doctrine of the human Self. But this Self is fur- 
ther known as bound into a more complex and looser sort 
of unity with the body, by a system of complicated interac- 
tions ; and through this system it is bound into the larger 
unity of the total World of things and of other selves. But 
on the other hand, as soon as the monistic view leads to the 
denial of those certified facts, and those valid inferences from 
the facts, which the return to the dualistic point of view always 
brings to mind, it makes this denial at the expense of its own 
support from a tenable theory of knowledge. The solipsism 
which identifies all reality with the Ugo's states, effects this 
denial in one way ; the materialism which will hear only of 
one reality, and that the reality of things, takes another 
course. But the cognition of man persistently affirms the 
reality both of the Self and of Things. And finally, every 
monistic theory of Reality which so identifies all different 
beings as to destroy the actuality of the differentiations 
which cognition validates, is thereby self-confuted. The 
many existences of the world of our experience are not so one 
as to lose all individuality, or as to annul the reality and the 
worth of that system of relations in which human cognition 
finds them, and which it is the business of human cognitive 
faculty to discover, to recognize, and to proclaim. 

Here again, then, the Philosophy of Knowledge demands 
that it shall itself be supplemented by some Theory of Reality 
which will admit and harmonize the valid claims of both Dual- 
ism and Monism. We do not believe that to meet this de- 
mand is a hopeless, or even an overwhelmingly difficult task. 
On the contrary, the indices that point the directions in 
which the search should go have been appearing from time 
to time, during the course of our epistemological investigation. 
No good reason can be given why so-called " common-sense," 
and science as conducted from both the physical and the psy- 



588 DUALISM AND MONISM 

chical points of view, and the last word of philosophy as in- 
volving an attempt at that final synthesis of the reflective 
powers which interprets the inner meaning of things, should 
not all be in substantial accord upon this great subject. The 
cosmic mathematics of the unreflecting, of the scientific, and 
of the philosophical mind, although somewhat figurative in 
its expressions, need not be full of internal contradictions. 
Terms of number — one, two, or more — even when applied 
to abstract principles, to complex ideas, or to systems of be- 
lief and of impressions that are subject to ethical and asstheti- 
cal prejudices, ought not to be absolutely unintelligible or 
afflicted with inherent contradictions. 

Suppose, then, that we take our start on fair terms of un- 
derstanding with the plain man's consciousness. He has no 
doubt that he, as a conscious subject of states, is " one" in a 
sense of that word which cannot be made to gather and bind 
up with these states any others, into a unity of the same 
being. In this sense of the word, he cannot be made to be- 
lieve that any thing, not even that physical organization with 
which his consciousness is most intimately connected, is a 
part of the same unity. But he has scarcely less doubt that 
this duality, which exists between himself as conscious sub- 
ject of states and his own body, is not inconsistent with, but 
is rather explicable only in terms of another kind of unity. 
This new unity, which embraces the duality of mind and 
body, is that which makes him to be " one man." Its essen- 
tial characteristic, the deprivation of which would reduce this 
unity from a highly significant reality to a fictitious and de- 
lusive dream, is the actuality of the causal relation between 
body and mind. Accepting this relation as valid in reality 
he finds himself, as one man, however separate in this unity 
of his manhood, still bound into a social and a comprehensive 
psycho-physical unity with the world of his environment. 
It is this, to him, more indefinite and yet all inclusive unity 
in which he has life, and motion, and being ; for he is, at the 



DUALISM AND MONISM 589 

same time, always a child of nature and a child of human 
society. By all his practical activities, as he accepts the 
dominion of nature and yet reacts in order to subjugate to 
his uses her materials and her forces, he makes acknowledg- 
ment of the reality of this all-comprehensive Unity. In the 
higher exercises of the ideal life, in ethics and in art, and in 
religion, he expresses a similar confidence. He is always 
thinking of himself as one Self, with a body making one man, 
set over against the rest of the world of selves and of things 
in this unchanging duality ; and yet he knows he is a part 
of that which must be regarded as a supreme and ultimate 
Reality. 

This way of accepting and naively blending the dualistic 
and the monistic views has, undoubtedly, much in it which 
needs critical investigation and readjustment, if it is to be 
fitted to meet the more profound insights and needs of the 
scientific and reflective mind. But there is, we believe, not a 
single essential feature of the portrait it draws which is not 
true to the real facts in the case. And, on the other hand, 
there is not a single fact or law known to the sciences of 
human nature, whether chemico-physical or psycho-physical 
and psychical, which can be brought to bear against the truth- 
fulness of this common-sense view. Reality, as these sciences 
know it, would seem to be actually constituted on this same 
plan. It is a system of beings, in which there are selves that 
know themselves to have a unique unity and incomparable 
separateness from all other beings ; but it is also a system in 
which these beings and all beings are bound together into the 
higher and the ultimate unity of the World-All. 

But philosophy inquires as to how this Ultimate Unity shall 
be so constructed by reflective thinking as best to satisfy all 
the conditions involved. To this question epistemology has 
already pointed out the approximate and provisional answer. 
Reality, in order to be known as this ultimate and all-inclusive 
Unitv, must be conceived of as having all the characteristics 



590 DUALISM AND MONISM 

of our highest ideal of a Self. For it is only a Self that pro- 
vides for the actualization of ideas, and for a Reality that is 
the correlate and satisfaction of all ideas. Only a Self can be 
such an Ideal-Real as this cognized system of real beings and 
actual transactions is known to be. Besides this, it is only in 
such a Self that the principles both of differentiation and of 
unification can be satisfied. If Reality actually is constructed, 
so to speak, after the pattern which we are obliged to follow 
in our fragmentary and wavering cognition of its manifold 
manifestations, then the last demand of a critical episte- 
mology is satisfied. We have carried the epistemological 
problem to the place where its answer merges into the theory 
of Reality. 



CHAPTER XXI 

KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

THERE is an unsettled strife between the extreme of 
agnosticism and an uncritical metaphysics over an- 
other problem about which epistemological investigation has 
important suggestions to offer. This problem may be some- 
what indefinitely stated as the following question : Can man 
know the Absolute ? Every system of metaphysics, and in- 
deed every fragmentary proposition of an ontological char- 
acter, seems compelled to make some sort of an affirmative 
answer to this question. But agnosticism does not corre- 
spond to its title unless it proposes some form of a negative 
answer to the same question. Here, then, there seems to 
arise a contradiction which admits little hope of being ad- 
justed by inducing each of the contending parties to accept 
the more important claims of the other. It was partly this 
experience of the race, and especially of the generation just 
preceding his own, which led Kant to the conclusion that, on 
the one hand, reason will continue to cheat even the wisest of 
men into believing that they can, by the dialectic of illusion, 
reach a cognition of the unconditioned, and yet, on the other 
hand, that all metaphysics, as a credible ontological system, 
is intrinsically impossible. 

A critical examination, however, of these contradictory ex- 
tremes — with their " Yes " on one side and " No " on the 
other side, so plumply asserted — shows that neither is able 
to state its positions clearly without admitting into them con- 
siderations of a modifying order taken from the positions of 
the other. The unprejudiced historical critic of this long- 



592 KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

time continued and unsettled strife might safely challenge us 
to produce a single notable combatant on the side of agnosti- 
cism who has not made ample confession of his own confi- 
dence in certain truths proclaimed by the philosophy of the 
Absolute ; and there are few among the most daring onto- 
logical system-makers who do not at times show signs of the 
consciousness that they are themselves soaring in air too thin 
to enable even the wings of fancy to support them in safety. 
If we needed illustrations, where could one more patent and 
forcible be found than the illustration offered by the great 
apostle of agnosticism among philosophical writers in English ? 
A more stupendous system of alleged cognitions that have 
an absolute value, and that concern ultimate and permanent 
entities and unalterable truths, has never been put forth by 
any reflective mind than the system issued under cover of this 
agnosticism. Hegel and Schopenhauer were not more con- 
fident and dogmatic in their ontology, were not on higher 
terms of professed intimacy with the Ultimate Reality of the 
Universe, than is Mr. Herbert Spencer. Here we have 
" Being," as it was and is and ever will be, and the funda- 
mental law of all " Becoming," as the law has been, is now, and 
will continue to be, calmly and confidently set forth in many 
volumes by a finite creature of the nineteenth-century order 
of so-called scientific development. To what height above 
this can Absolutism ever venture to climb ? Not only the 
" Transfigured Realism " and the formulas which, replete 
with ontological assumptions, define the Ultimate Reality, 
but also the detailed elaboration of the agnostic doctrine, 
from its opening proposal for a reconciliation of science and 
religion in a common creed of nescience to its final words on 
society, is one huge body of ontological metaphysics. 

It is not our intention, however, to reproach Mr. Spencer 
for having elaborated a doctrine which gives the complete 
anatomy and physiology of the Absolute, with so commenda- 
ble patience, industry, insight, and learning. There are 



KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 598 

many others whose efforts might be cited in illustration of 
the same truth. All philosophy or attempt at philosophy, 
even the most agnostic, necessarily assumes some sort of con- 
scious mental relation of man to the Absolute ; but on the 
other hand, all philosophy or attempt at philosophy, however 
dogmatic, is forced to acknowledge some sort of a limit beyond 
which any such relation as can properly be called " knowledge" 
cannot be claimed to extend. It will not do on this account 
to resolve the conflict between the extremes of agnosticism 
and an uncritical metaphysics into a mere logomachy. This 
shallow and indolent way of treating important standing 
disputes of a rational kind is the more reprehensible when 
applied to the profound and difficult problems of philosophy. 
The path which reflective thinking follows in its effort to give 
content to the conception of the Absolute can fitly be trodden 
only by the most serious and carefully trained minds. It 
leads to many difficult and profound problems ; the rather is 
it strewn with such problems. These problems, like all those 
which have been raised in the last several chapters, must find 
their fuller solution, if at all, in other forms of philosophical 
discipline. But the question " Can man know the Abso- 
lute ? " concerns, not only the constitution of the conception 
answering to a term which is capable of such varying mean- 
ings (the "Absolute"), but also the nature of knowledge, 
and the character of the relation to his object in which the 
knower is placed. It is for these and other kindred reasons 
that epistemology has certain suggestions to offer in answer 
to this problem. 

The previous detailed consideration of the philosophy of 
knowledge has led us far enough to see that there are certain 
fixed and unalterable " momenta " which belong to human 
knowledge, whether it be considered subjectively and as" an 
affair of human mental life, or trans-subjectively as impli- 
cating the real beings and actual transactions of the world of 
things. It is possible, then, that in some sense of the word 

38 



594 KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

" absolute " a good and fair correspondent for it may be some- 
how provided — at least suggestively — by the theory of knowl- 
edge. It is not simply possible, but it is perfectly obvious, 
that there are current meanings of the term " The Absolute," 
which cannot be accepted ; for they are incompatible with the 
very nature of cognition and with the entire relation to the 
trans-subjective which cognition implies. Claims to a knowl- 
edge of the Absolute, as set forth in such terms, will have to 
be dismissed as soon as their character is disclosed ; knowl- 
edge itself is known to bear a fixed and unalterable character 
which will not tolerate them. For example, if by " the Abso- 
lute " it is meant to designate that which is totally unrelated, 
— absolute, because absolved from all conceivable relations 
and, as it were, spoiled or dishonored by being brought under 
the category of relation, — then. there is little need to discuss 
the question, whether man can know such an absolute. The re- 
lation of subject and object has been found so fundamental that 
cognition cannot exist, even in the barest outline of its con- 
ception, without this relation being set into reality. Further, 
every concrete cognition is an actually established relation 
between the mind and its object ; and it is a relation in which 
the dependence of the mind on reality for entering into this 
relation is emphasized, although the dependence of the reality 
of the object on the mind's willing, feeling, and thinking is 
never wholly abrogated or annulled. And if we take the 
trans-subjective point of view, and have regard to the nature of 
real things as known to the mind, the category of relation is 
that characteristic which, above all others, they wear most 
manifestly as their very own. To speak, then, of a knowledge 
of the totally unrelated, or of that which must be conceived of 
as incapable of relations, whether shrinking from them, or 
shirking them, or being too pure and high, or too remote and 
unsubstantial to undertake them, involves a contradiction in 
terms which needs no refutation ; it is too glaring to be put 
into intelligible language. 



KNOWLEDGE AXD THE ABSOLUTE 595 

Xor is knowledge of the Absolute possible if this' word 
must be identified with the unchanging, — with that which is 
absolved from all alterations of its own states or of the rela- 
tions in which these states stand to human cognitive con- 
sciousness. Reality, conceived of as One and permanently the 
same, as respects both its own internal being and also its 
interactions with the cognitive subject, cannot be an object of 
human knowledge. For the very nature of cognition is such 
that it must represent in changing and yet orderly sequent 
states of the cognitive subject the real being and actual trans- 
actions of things. Knowledge is an ever varying life of a 
Self ; and beings, in reality, must " live up to it," in order 
that they may become the objects of knowledge. To suppose 
that Reality is dead and inactive, or is a monotonous being- 
related of a Ding-a?i-sich, that is loath to change in any man- 
ner which may serve as the actual ground and correlate of 
the changes of the human life of cognition, is to render the 
truthfulness of all cognition invalid. The process of know- 
ing is not, indeed, a mere copy of what is, and is going on, in 
the trans-subjective object of knowledge. But it could not be 
that confident and warm commerce with the world of real 
beings and of their actual transactions which it purports to 
be, unless varied action and fulness of life could be con- 
ceived of as characteristic of its object. They, the things that 
are not-me, the other selves and the things they perceive, are 
all alive. They constitute for me, and for every cognitive 
subject, an all-embracing Life of varied changes in which the 
Ego, by cognition and by the action which cognition induces 
and guides, takes its subordinate part. This view which re- 
gards the nature of things as centres, systematically ordered, 
of unceasing changes which the cognitive subject partially 
but, with an increasing degree of truthfulness and in depend- 
ence upon the growth of cognition, mentally represents, is 
the scientific and the philosophic view. The Reality, thus 
revealed in its most permanent and unchanging characteris- 



596 KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

tics, is not devoid of life in time or of ceaseless change ; the 
rather is it the ground and essential inner principle of all 
changes, and the Life of all living and non-living things. 
Only as Itself actualizing all the true formulas for the chang- 
ing relations of things, and thus affording the ultimate ex- 
planation of the varied cognitions of these changing relations 
which different minds represent as their subjective experi- 
ences, can this Reality be known at all. Its very claim to be 
thought of as Absolute depends upon its being able to satisfy 
in reality the demands for a trans-subjective ground of all 
subjective changes. 

Once more, the very nature of cognitive faculty forbids 
making the Absolute an object of knowledge after this object 
has been, by a process of abstraction, stripped of all definite 
and representable content. If by the terms employed it is 
meant to designate that which is absolved from all particular 
relations, so that the human mind is obliged to hold and to say 
nothing positive about it — an Absolute = an X, whose value 
can never be determined, even with the remotest degree of 
approximation — then, too, it is idle to discuss the possibility 
of finding such an object of knowledge. That which has no 
positive characteristics that are presentable or representable 
in consciousness, cannot be known. Purely negative and 
limiting concepts, if such concepts there be in themselves 
considered, must not be confused with cognitions. On this 
point, the Kantian caution remains forever commendable. 

To speak in homely fashion the plain truth about this word, 
it would seem that it should not be employed except as an 
adjective to qualify some noun whose meaning must have been 
previously stated in terms of positive knowledge. " The 
Absolute " is nought ; by itself, it is mere refusal to think, to 
give any positive content or discernible direction to the stream 
of consciousness. What is it about which the qualification of 
absoluteness, in some definite meaning of this qualification, is 
affirmed or denied ? — this is the question which must always 



KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 597 

follow immediately upon the proposal to discuss the problem 
of knowledge and the Absolute. To such a question one must 
always answer in terms of Some Being, about which there is 
thiuking to be done ; it is affirmed or denied that this Being 
can be really existent, if it is thought of as freed, or absolved, 
from certain particular sets of relations. But the " absolu- 
tion " from certain relations thus granted or denied can 
never destroy all the positive content of thought that belongs 
to the Being which is the claimant for absolution. The 
moment the predicate of absoluteness ceases to be relative, 
that is, to apply to certain relations only, that moment the ob- 
jectivity for possible cognition also ceases. In other words, 
whatever I know is some thing known to be existent thus 
rather than otherwise. Whatever I conceive of must have 
content for its conception. Whatever I think about, however 
vaguely, and whatever I conjecture, however unwarrantably, 
must be thought about and conjectured with reference to 
some positive experience of Reality — either of my Self or 
Things — somehow delimited or denned. You cannot know 
Nought. You cannot know, or know about, the Absolute, if 
by this term you mean to designate the negation of all posi- 
tive and particular characteristics. 

It is a suggestion which is found to be as hopeful and com- 
forting from the point of view of man's practical necessities 
as it is promising in epistemology and metaphysics, that the 
enrichment in content of the conception of the Absolute is 
better than its impoverishment. Reality is not best conceived 
of, in its sum-total and complete significance, as a barren and 
characterless affair. It is not dignified or gratified most by 
being placed remote from the work-a-day life and varied cog- 
nitions of humanity ; it receives no added crown on being 
banished to the death-kingdom of abstract thought. There 
is more that the man of science knows how to ex- 
plain, more than philosophy can give complete insight into, 
that meets the worshipper when he makes his fetish of the 



598 KNOYfLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

commonest materials. The Platonic ideas do not fear con- 
tamination from the dust and the mire of daily life. To every 
man the message of Reality comes : this " word is nigh thee, 
even in thy mouth, and in thy heart." The absolution from 
illegitimate bounds is much greater when we begin to try to 
tell ourselves all which Reality may be affirmed to be, than 
when we seek to guard it carefully from being qualified too 
richly and too manifoldly, by rehearsing what it is not. But 
whether one affirm or deny, both affirmation and denial have 
significance for human consciousness only as they are clothed 
with some positive content. Then, and only then, can affir- 
mation or denial enter into a contention that at least has 
a meaning and a possible outcome, whether terms can ever 
be discovered for a complete reconcilement or not. 

Having thus safeguarded our word from a complete lack of 
significance we may receive from epistemology three kinds of 
suggestions which have a bearing upon the problem of knowl- 
edge and the Absolute. One of these suggestions comes from an 
analysis of the subjective nature of knowledge ; another takes 
note chiefly of the relation which knowledge establishes be- 
tween subject and its object, considered as really existent ; and 
the third arises from the somewhat vague and yet important 
doctrine of Reality to which the theory of knowledge points 
the way. The very behavior of the mind in its cognitive activ- 
ity, even when regarded as a subjective affair, suggests the 
presence in consciousness of that which is entitled to be called 
" absolute." The different particular factors of the substance 
of knowledge may all be regarded as relative and capable of 
indefinite variations according to no permanent and unchang- 
ing standard. There are so many of each kind of sensations 
— a quite indefinite and seemingly unregulated number — for 
every individual ; there are so many myriads of color-sensa- 
tions for A and an unlike number for B, as the accidents of 
birth and of the excitations of environment happen to fall. 
Nor is the case different with other sensations, except as, for 



KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 599 

some unknown reason, the numbers are increased or dimin- 
ished. Color-sensations are representable by a triangle with 
a curved apex, from which the bottom has dropped off ; but 
sensations of sound are represented better by a straight line 
which has neither beginning nor end ; and smells may not 
be easily plotted according to any kind of curve. Nor does 
the particular order which the serial states assume in the 
stream of consciousness seem to be subject to absolute and 
predetermined rules. Looking at any mental life merely 
content-wise, as such and so much of sensation, ideation, con- 
scious motor activity, etc., everything seems relative to every- 
thing else. Change is mere change. No ruler over all 
appears. But with the total life of cognition, viewed as it 
appears to epistemological analysis, the case is not so. For 
such analysis discloses certain limiting and guiding principles 
that define the life of cognition as a rational striving toward 
some form of that which has value in itself. This conscious- 
ness of the Absolute that every cognitive subject carries 
within his breast, is naively expressed by the plain man in 
the satisfaction he feels respecting the unconditioned truthful- 
ness and the worth, for all rational minds, of certain of 
his own thoughts and ideas. The more ignorant he is, per- 
chance, the surer he is that the very truth of God, and the 
truth of all the ages, resides within himself. In his narrow 
and shallow stream of consciousness he feels flowing the 
waters that come from the celestial hills, and that are passing 
on to the ocean of Infinity. He knows that he is, and Nature 
is ; and that behind and beneath both, there is Another — with 
a strength and tenacity of conviction which will not be gain- 
said. He attains to such a sufficiency of knowledge that he 
freely calls the Universe to account for itself at the bar of his 
judgment. Splendid audacity, but as amazing as it is splendid ! 
For have not positivist, and agnostic, and the disciples of the 
critical philosophy exposed the fallacy of all this, with untir- 
ing patience and tiresome prolixity ? But the plain man goes 



600 KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

steadily on, handing in his practical adherence to another form 
of epistemological doctrine. He is a born absolutist with 
respect to the rights of his own cognitive faculty. 

And when we extend our psychological analysis of knowl- 
edge in such thorough way as to merge it in epistemological 
criticism, we discover the warrant for this universal confidence 
in the absoluteness of certain states of human consciousness. 
To the theory of knowledge the stream of consciousness is no 
longer an inconstant flux of psychoses. It is the life of a 
rational being who gropes after truth, and stretches out his 
hands toward the Infinite and the Unconditioned, and betimes 
lays a satisfying grasp upon a portion of that for which he 
feels destined to strive. In this life, considered as a subjec- 
tive affair but also considered in respect of the profounder 
depths of its subjectivity, change is not mere change ; nor is 
each factor purely relative to something else which is alike 
fleeting and conditionated. But all states appear — in addition 
to the relations they sustain to each other — as relative to the 
one subject of them all. Every state must indeed be related to 
antecedent states ; and so it is capable of partial explanation 
as sequent to and consequent upon these antecedent states. 
But every state must also be regarded as relative to a Self 
whose it is, as all these other states have been, and as 
all succeeding states will be. And now we discover that 
this subject of the states, this Self, is not a characterless 
affair. What it is, cannot be made wholly dependent upon 
its states and relative to them — a mere summing-up of the 
events which they are. It has a nature that is fixed, unchang- 
ing, of its own. In our ignorance of the depth, the breadth, 
and the significance of this fact, we regard this so-called 
" nature " as theoretically divisible into two portions or sets 
of characteristics. Of these one is the nature of the individ- 
ual Self and the other is the nature which the individual has, 
and shares, in common with the race. 

Of every man it must be said that he has the cognitive con- 



KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 601 

stitution of humanity, and also that he has something which 
limits and determines the character of his life of cognition, 
and which is peculiarly his own. Biology and anthropology 
strive to regard both these sources of contribution to what is 
the independent and unconditioned, in comparison with the 
dependent and relative character of the successive states, as 
themselves dependent upon and relative to the antecedent 
members of the race of men, or of other races of animals 
lower down in the scale which sets the standard of values. 
This is their legitimate task as laborers in the fields of the 
growing science of man. But all that they have to disclose 
only carries the same inquiry further back ; or rather by their 
digging about the roots of humanity, they only carry the need 
of a limit to all explanations, further out and deeper down. 
For this picture of the development of human beings as a race 
that has Selfhood, which perchance sprung, after the flesh, 
from races that had it not, is no more successful in freeing 
our minds from the recognition of what is absolute and uncon- 
ditioned in human consciousness than is the picture which 
descriptive psychology presents of the development of a single 
soul. The real question at issue is not as to when, or by 
what stages, man comes to the consciousness of something 
absolute as given in his own cognitive being, but as to the 
significance of the fact that epistemological insight finds the 
absolute as already, somehow, consciously there. 

If, however, a more detailed statement is required as to 
what there is in the cognitive experience of men which war- 
rants us in affirming the implied presence of what must be 
called " the Absolute," our answer might be drawn from 
almost the entire body of the discussions which are now about 
to close. It will suffice to remind one who is inclined to be 
thoughtful at this point that the constitutional laws of the 
cognitive faculty, and the character of the object cognized in 
every act of developed self-consciousness, both warrant us in 
speaking of the matter in this way. Here, of course, demon- 



602 KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

stration is impossible ; but attention can be called to facts, 
and to their apparent significance. Certain principles, un- 
changing and of unconditioned value, are found immanent in 
all the life of cognitive faculty. To regard them as relative 
and changeable, either in the life of the individual or of the 
race, is to try to set into terms acceptable to reason the irra- 
tional and the absurd. For example, suppose that it is pro- 
posed to deny, at first, and then to test, in accordance with 
any given psychological or anthropological theory, the validity 
of the principles of identity and of sufficient reason. This 
theory itself is absolutely dependent, for its existence and for 
such poor claims to acceptance as it may possess, upon the 
unconditioned worth of these principles, and upon the mind's 
absolute and unchanging trust in them. Is what we call hu- 
man reason itself a development ? Are the fundamental prin- 
ciples of cognitive faculty in man a product from the evolution 
of things or of animals that are wholly without such principles ? 
This is totally unthinkable. The very attempt to think it 
brings out the truth that human cognition, become self- 
conscious and critical, is compelled to recognize the presence 
of something absolute in human consciousness, — in the form 
of those fundamental cognitive principles to which all par- 
ticular cognitions are relative, but which cannot themselves be 
regarded as dependent upon those cognitions or upon the 
particular objects cognized. 

Nor is this presence of the absolute in the life of human 
cognition a purely formal affair. There is a being given to us 
in the activities of this life which, in some sort, worthily rep- 
resents its own presence as an actuality ; it is the being whose 
cognitive constitution embraces in its formal aspect the idea 
of that which is not dependent, but which is itself the ground 
upon which the particular experiences repose. This being is 
the self-known Self. So long as I take the purely subjective 
point of view, the one being which I know, as setting the limits 
to, and making rules for, all other beings, but which itself 



KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 603 

appears as the self-determining source of all limitations and 
rules, is the subject of cognition. It knows itself to be both 
active and passive ; but both in action and in suffering alike, it 
is the one to whom all the varied changes belong. They may 
come and they may go, but it is. u It is : " the meaning of such 
an affirmation, so far as an answer can be given, it belongs to 
the metaphysics of mind to disclose. 1 But that the Self does 
posit its own being as the unconditioned source, subjectively 
considered, of all the shifting and relative psychoses in the 
stream of consciousness, there can be no doubt. In some sort, 
then, when the question, " How can man know the Absolute ? " 
is raised, it may be answered by an appeal to all his cognitive 
experience. The answer may be made in terms of no unmean- 
ing figure of speech : Look within thyself ; for this " word is 
nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart." 

If now knowledge is regarded as a relation established be- 
tween the knower and the realities which he regards as not 
himself, other glimpses of the presence and the meaning of 
the absolute within and without human cognitive conscious- 
ness may be gained. Here analysis deals directly with what 
is relative, as the very phrase to be analyzed proclaims. Cog- 
nition, considered as a relation, has been seen to be one of 
reciprocal influence and determination. I determine the 
object of my own cognition ; and thus it is for its very being — 
that it is, and what it is as my object — dependent upon me. 
By a process which involves all my powers, my entire being, 
and which terminates in a cognitive judgment, I influence 
and mould it so as to make it my own. So that from this 
point of view, if one should venture to speak of attaining to a 
knowledge of the Absolute, such knowledge could only be on 
the condition that this absolute should submit itself to the 
human mind, to be felt, reasoned about, mentally seized and 
appropriated, after being intellectually moulded " to our mind." 
We may call this "accommodation," or "condescension," or 

1 See the chapter on "The Reality of the Mind," in " Philosophy of Mind." 



604 KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

what we will ; but the very nature of cognition, as a relation 
of my being to other being, implies that it is so. Turning the 
transaction about, however, it appears, with even more clear- 
ness of insight and confidence of conviction, that in this very 
cognitive relation, I am dependent upon some other being not- 
myself. This being, which is to be or has already become my 
object, influences and determines me. Its will makes itself 
felt as an invincible and limiting barrier, that is no dead wall 
of resistance, but an expression of a force in which the tele- 
ology of immanent ideas is manifest, upon my will. Its quali- 
fications of sensuous and other kinds incite and guide me to 
a knowledge of it — that it is and what it is — which lam 
persuaded is true to the facts of its being and its living reality. 
When the cognitive relation between us is once established, as 
well as during all the while that it is inchoate and developing, 
both / and It are taking part in a transaction which requires 
for its very existence the help of us both. 

Moreover, the various modifications of the relation of knowl- 
edge between the knower and things known appear almost 
infinite. No individual knower is precisely like any other. 
No single cognition on the part of any individual knower is 
certain to be precisely like any other. And the reality of the 
things appears more than abundantly able to satisfy, in its 
own changing moods, the demands made upon it that it shall 
furnish its full share in contribution to these manifold modifi- 
cations. The relations of the mind and things, in man's 
knowledge of them, thus seem themselves to be relative and 
lacking in all fixedness and independence of character. 

To all this, however, there is another side. This other side 
is dimly apprehended and borne witness to by the conscious- 
ness of the multitude. We may not choose to give the name 
" cognition " to this consciousness ; it may seem more appro- 
priate to call it a faith, a hope, an impression, or by some 
other term of emotion. But the analysis of knowledge shows 
that it is an attitude of the mind, or a factor in the attitude of 



KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 605 

mind, which all men take toward the objects of knowledge. 
Things change the relations in which, the terms on which, 
they will allow themselves to be cognized by us. What they 
mean by these changes, it is often, perhaps universally, diffi- 
cult to say with any degree of confidence. We have to take 
them as they are, and make the best guesses possible as to 
what they will be. But we must also trust them ; and on the 
whole we find them worthy of being trusted. For they, too, 
obey laws and, in some sort at least, follow ends. They have 
" mind in them ; " otherwise they could not be " minded by 
us." Yet, further, we venture to believe that they wish us 
well — at least to some extent, and in some of their manifold 
changing relations to us. This faith in the good-will and 
rationality of things, as setting some sort of a limit to the 
relations into which we enter with them, in the act of knowl- 
edge, is a part of the act of knowledge itself. Even when we 
" look out " for things, lest they may hurt us, we continue to 
trust them to furnish the signs of their intention toward us. 
Some of them are treacherous indeed; but even gunpowder 
and dynamite have been studied, and the relations they are 
willing to sustain to us in action have been made objects 
of knowledge. Even the most capricious of the bacteria we 
live in the hope of knowing well enough to escape, and perhaps 
to use for the furtherance of human good. The path which 
electricity chooses to travel, under all conceivable circum- 
stances, will some day be discovered. 

Thus do the very relations into which man's knowledge of 
the world of real beings and actual transactions brings him 
themselves appear to faith and to hope as the manifestations 
of absolute will and of its unchanging, immanent ideas. 
Something absolute in them seems to set the limit to what 
would otherwise be unintelligible change in their ways of 
behavior relative to us, and such unmanageable caprice as to 
make life impossible for the race of' men. But this faith and 
hope are both born of experience and are also the mother and 



606 KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

nurse of experience. They suggest and guide the individual 
cognitions ; they are nourished and expanded or corrected, by 
the individual cognitions. They are significant of the great 
truth which is postulated as a faith, and confirmed as a 
theory, by all knowledge considered as a system of changing 
relations between the mind and things. Things are not mere 
things, if by this it be meant that they are all to be regarded 
as completely explained by the relations they sustain to one 
another and to us, and by enumerating the series of the 
changes which these relations undergo. It is not, then, an 
unwarrantable conjecture, or the substitution of an unmean- 
ing figure of speech for a reasonable proposition when it is 
affirmed : Things are the manifestation, the word to man, of 
an all-pervading Will and Mind. There is that in Things 
which irresistibly and forever determines the relations under 
which they shall become known to man. This unconditioned 
and unchanging being of which they partake, which gives 
to them the conditions of all their relations to us, and which 
is the permanent ground of all the changes they undergo, is 
the Absolute. Faith in it is the guaranty of human cognitive 
experience ; this experience itself constitutes its perpetual 
recognition. 

Something that may be called " absolute " is, therefore, found 
to be present in all the cognitive life of man as seen from the 
subjective point of view. Something that may be called ab- 
solute is the postulate, held by his primitive faith and con- 
firmed by the growth of his cognition, which inheres in that 
relation of the Self and Things in which cognition consists. 
May we, however, form a conception which shall include all 
selves and all things, considered under all actual and possible 
terms of relation, as dependent upon this conception ; and 
may we then assert reality for that conception as a possible 
object of knowledge ? We believe that an affirmative answer 
to this question is suggested by the truths which have been 
established as belonging to the philosophy of knowledge. 



KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 607 

Such a conception cannot, indeed, be the correlate of the 
Unrelated, of the One and Unchanging, or of the merely 
abstract and undefined Ground of all relations and of all 
change. But it would seem that this conception must take 
the form of an Absolute Self. " It would seem " so ; if, in- 
deed, the suggestions which epistemology has furnished with 
regard to the innermost nature of Reality can be elaborated 
by metaphysics in a satisfactory way. For it has been shown 
that the fundamental and unchanging characteristics of cog- 
nition reach their supreme manifestation in self-knowledge. 
Here the object is most immediately and fully given to the 
subject, as it really is, and so as to embrace the discernment 
of intellect, the warm conviction of truth, and the vital seizure 
of will — all in the highest degree obtainable by human cog- 
nitive faculty. It is the being of my Self which I most fully, 
indubitably, and tenaciously make the object of knowledge. 
And as I consider all which is involved in such cognition I 
find that something absolute is known as present in my con- 
sciousness, no matter how subjectively directed my considera- 
tion may be. 

Yet again, that which is not-myself — whether other selves 
or so-called things — I know to be, only as it is somehow 
qualified in terms that can be vivified and verified by an 
appeal to my self-known Self. That things are, I cannot 
doubt ; that they are not-me I know as incontestably as that 
I myself am. But what are they ? — this raises a question 
which admits of answer only as I am permitted to use anal- 
ogies derived from my experience with myself. Upon this 
use of analogies, however, every man insists. Without as- 
suming and, in his growth of knowledge, constantly evincing 
the truth of this proposition, all science and all philosophy 
cease to be knowledge and become something less than 
consistent dreaming. Indeed, when it is considered how 
experience itself cannot be built up, or subjected to sceptical 
criticism, without admitting its own transcendency, the 



608 KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

" proof " of this assumption is seen to lie in the fact that 
the mind has any standard of thinking and judging whatever. 
And when the teleology of knowledge, and the ethical and 
aesthetical u momenta " which enter into it, are taken into 
the account, warrant appears for saying that the very struc- 
ture and growth of knowledge shows Reality to be a larger 
and all-inclusive Self. But now since it is on this Reality 
that we are dependent, and since it is its Nature which gives 
to things their relative natures and positions with relation to 
one another and to us, why should we hesitate to speak of 
Reality as the Absolute Self ? 

Can man know the Absolute ? Are Knowledge and Abso- 
luteness terms which can dwell together in unity, or are they 
mutually exclusive and contradictory ? Let us change the 
character of the question : May we with data of knowledge 
frame the conception of that Reality on which all dependent 
and relative beings, both minds and things, depend for their 
existence, and which serves as the Ground of all relations and 
of all changes, but is itself destroyed or diminished by none ; 
and will human cognitive faculty bear witness to the satis- 
factoriness and to the validity of such a conception ? The 
theory of knowledge, at least, does not render necessary a 
negative answer to these questions. On the contrary, it 
favors and even demands a positive answer. It also suggests 
what that answer shall be. 

The problem of knowledge was attempted at the beginning 
in a wholly presuppositionless and critical way. The dis- 
cussion of the problem closes with the recognition of a pre- 
supposition, which has been found lying underneath all the 
earlier analysis, and which comes to the surface and to the 
front, as the work of epistemology is concluded. Man knows 
Reality because Reality is of his own kinship. In knowledge, 
will answers to will and mind to mind. Yes ; there are even 
indications in the very nature of cognition that what ethics 
and religion crave to discover is true ; and that heart 



KNOWLEDGE AND THE ABSOLUTE 



609 



speaks to heart a voice whose promises are often obscure, 
but never wholly false. Knowledge is indeed relative ; but 
it is itself the establishment of a relation between the Re- 
vealer, the Absolute Self, and the Self to whom the revela- 



tion comes. 



39 



INDEX 



Absolute, the, knowledge of, 364 f., 

591 f., 608 f. 

Adickes, his criticism of Kant, 294 

(note). 
^Esthetics, judgments of, 175 f., 512 f., 

524. 
Agnosticism, Mr. Spencer's, 370 f., 

592 f. ; nature of, 371 f., 382 f . ; 
limits of, 382 f., 387 f. 

Albertus, on nature of knowledge, 54 f. 
Antinomies, the Kantian, 82 f., 91, 
399 f., 410 f.; of Hegel, 91; nature 
of, in general, 396 f., 402 f . ; Mr. 
Bradley's doctrine of , 399 f., 417 f. 
Aquinas, on nature of knowledge, 52 f 
Aristotle, his schemata, 24 ; theory of 
cognition, 36 f. ; doctrine of the syl- 
logism, 36 ; influence on Leibnitz, 
71 ; and on Kant, 74 f. 
Augustine, doctrine of faith and knowl- 
edge, 31 f., 46 f., 50, 126; and of 
free-will, 50; merits of, 31, 47 f . ; 
compared with Descartes, 47 ; influ- 
ence of, 54 f. 
Authority, doctrine of, among Church 
Fathers, 45 f. ; Descartes upon, 57 f. 

Berkeley, on nature of knowledge, 
64 f. 

Bonaventura, on faith and knowledge, 
126. 

Bradley, Mr., his doctrine of " Appear- 
ance and Reality," 89 (note), 422 
(note) ; the antinomies of, 399, 417 f. ; 
his doctrine of judgment, 435 f. 

Caspari, on distinction of subject and 
object, 204 (note) ; on pseudo-con- 
cepts, 464 (note). 

Categories, validity of, 9 f., 147, 268 f., 
318 f., 359 f., 420 f., 532 f., 554 f., 570 f . 



Causation, Kant's conception of, 288 f., 
293 f., 414 f. ; reality of, 290 f., 320 1, 
360 f., 402 f., 547 f. ; relation of, be- 
tween body and mind, 551 f. 

Change, category of, 360 f., 401 f. 

Cognition (see Knowledge). 

Concept, relation of, to judgment, 143 f., 
297 f. ; of experience, 326 f., 333 f., 
335, 342 f. ; pseudo-concepts, 464 f. 
(note). 

Consciousness, relation of, to knowledge, 
6 f., 107 f., 113 f., 146 f., 197 f., 458 f. ; 
" stream" of, in thinking, 144 f . ; of 
Self, 197 f., 202 f., 208 f., 302 f. ; the 
ethical and aesthetical, 510 f. 

" Critique of Practical Reason," rela- 
tions of, to Kantian theory of knowl- 
edge, 73 f., 86 f., 409 f. 

" Critique of Pure Reason," positions 
of, 24 f., 73 f., 77 f ., 84 f., 255 f., 288 f ., 
340 f., 409 f., 516 f. 

Descartes, his theory of knowledge, 
58 f. ; doctrine of method, 60 f. 

Dreams, knowledge in, 235 f. 

Diihring, on principle of contradiction, 
363 (note). 

Duns Scotus, on nature of knowledge, 
54 f. 

Ethics, the cognitions of, 504 f. 

Epicureans, on nature of cognition, 41 f. 

Epistemology, problem of, 1 f., 11 f., 
21 f., 106 f., 126 f„ 373 f.,393 f., 489; 
relation to psychology, 5 f., 94 f. ; as 
branch of philosophy, 8 f., 372 f., 
587 f . ; sources of, 8 f . ; relation of, 
to metaphysics 11 f., 22, 25,268 f., 
365 f., 372 f., 495, 536, 587 f. ; history 
of, 30 f., 57 f. 



612 



INDEX 



Error, nature of, 424 f., 432 f., 439 f. ; 
limits of, 427 f . ; sources of, 456 f. 

Experience, as transcendent, 124 f., 
256 f., 322 f ., 325, 329 f., 494 ; mean- 
ing of, 324 f., 331 ; conditions of, 
326 f. ; laws of, 333 f . ; as criterion 
of Truth, 468 f., 493 f . 

Faculty, the cognitive, nature of, 122 f., 
502 f. (see Knowledge). 

Faith, Kantian doctrine of, 89 f., 323 f. ; 
as " belief " in Reality, 344 f ., 468 f . 

Feeling, Hume's doctrine of, 67 f. ; im- 
plied in cognition, 124 f., 160 f., 173 1, 
344 f. ; nature of, 165 f . ; classes of 
the cognitive, 167 f., 173 f. ; the logi- 
cal, 180 f. ; as regulative of cognition, 
182 f. 

Fenelon, on Augustine, 47. 

Fichte, conception of Wissenschafts- 
lehre, 13 ; on nature of cognition, 
89 f., 134 f. ; principle of identity, 274. 

Fischer, Kuno, on nature of philosophy, 
8f. 

Grimm, on Hume, 68 (note). 
Grote, on Aristotle's doctrine of cogni- 
tion, 36. 

Hartmann, on problem of epistemology, 
10 (note). 

Hegel, criticism of Kant, 16, 90 f. ; epis- 
temological position of, 90 f., 135 f., 
344; on thought and cognition, 135 f. 

Herbart, view of, as to origin of cogni- 
tion, 98 f. 

Hume, on nature of cognition, 65 f. ; 
doctrine of imagination, 66 f. ; influ- 
ence of, 68 f. ; conception of causa- 
tion, 301. 

Ideation, in judgments of cognition, 

145 f., 504 f.' 
Identity, principle of, 205 f., 268 f., 

319 f., 533 f. ; as applied to the Self, 

205 f., 280 f. ; logical form of, 272 f. ; 

applied to reality, 275 f., 533 f . 
Implicates, the, of knowledge, 124 f., 

155 f., 208 f., 256 f., 337 f., 343 f . ; 

form of, 344 f. 

James, Wm., on " belief" in Realitv, 
344 f. 



Jowett, on Plato's view of cognition, 
33, 35. 

Judgment, nature of the cognitive, 143 
f., 149, 150 f., 297 f., 436 f., 453 f., 
465 f.; the aesthetical, 175 f., 500 1; 
the ethical, 178 f., 500 f . ; as convey- 
ing Truth, 434 f . 

Kant, his criticism, 4 f., 73 I, .516 f.; 
influence of, 7 f ., 28 f ., 58 ; conception 
of epistemology, 11 f., 73 1, 77 f. ; his 
formalism, 24 f., 80 f., 301 f., 516 f. ; 
inconsistencies of, 73 f., 288 f., 333 f., 
340 ; assumptions of, 74 f., 82 f., 86 f., 
255 f., 517 f. ; fallacies of, 84 f., 134 f., 
255 f., 293 f.; view of intuition, 
106, 251 f., 257 ; on nature of knowl- 
edge, 133 f., 251 f., 255 f., 265 f., 
332 f., 339 f ., 343 f ., 399 ; and, espe- 
cially, of mathematics, 259 f. ; view 
of Reality, 265 f., 293 f ., 340 f ., 391 f. ; 
on " Analogies of Experience," 293 f . ; 
his concept of experience, 332 f. ; 
and theory of nescience, 391 f. ; doc- 
trine of antinomies, 399 f., 410 f. ; 
his " Logic of Illusion," 409 f. 

Kaulich, on knowledge and reality, 222 
(note). 

Klein, on the categories, 19& (note). 

Knowledge, problem of, 1 f., 105 f . ; 
nature of, 5 f., 22, 107 f., 113 f., 
126 f., 136 f., 146 f., 202 f., 474 f. ; 
objective, 6 f., 83 f., 113 f., 120 f., 
155 f., 332 f., 340 f. ; assumptions of, 
14 f., 224 f., 246 f., 306 f , 337 f., 
513 f. ; datum of, 15 f., 95 f., 338; 
psychological view of, 94 f., 193 1, 
228 f. ; origin of, 95 f., 101 f., 211 f., 
258 f.; growth of, 102 f., 126 f., 
211 f., 224 f. ; limits of, 104 f., 228 f., 
245 f.; certification of, 105 f„ 155 f., 
239 f., 393 f., 493 f. ; as conscious- 
ness, 107 f., 124 f. ; as activity, 123 f , 
137 f., 146 f., 190 f. ; as feeling, 
124 f., 160 f., 167 f., 499 f., 506 f . ; 
relation of, to thinking, 130 f., 258 f. ; 
nature of the conceptual, 151 1, 
252 f., 453 f. ; of Things, 193 1, 
208 f., 221 f., 304 f., 450 f. ; and of 
Self, 193 f., 243 f., 304, 315 1, 
348 f., 461 f., 528 ; degrees of, 228 f., 
238 f., 242 f. ; kinds of, 228 f., 538 f., 
546 f. ; relation of, to life, 232 f., 



INDEX 



613 



462 f. ; contrasted with opinion, 
234 f. ; in dreams, 235 f. ; the abso- 
lute, 243 f ., 538 f., 602 ; teleology of, 
472 f., 486 f., 506 f., 519 f . ; ethical 
and sesthetical " momenta " of, 500 f., 
511 f., 521 f. ; relation of, to Reality, 
530 f., 542 f., 547 f., 553 f., 556 f. 

Leibnitz, views on epistemology, 69 f. ; 
influence on Kant, 72 f. 

Locke, his method, 62 f. ; and doctrine 
of cognition, 62 f. ; compared with 
Hume, 65 ; influence on Leibnitz, 70. 

Logic, its attitude to epistemology, 
1 30 f . ; view of fundamental princi- 
ples, 268 f . ; of " Illusion," 409 f . 

Lotze, on theory of knowledge, 16, 
156 ; and nature of proof, 358. 

Mansel, his " Limits of Religious 

Thought," 89 (note). 
Mathematics, nature of its cognitions, 

259 f . ; relation of, to truth of things, 

439 f. 
Memory, relation of, to cognition, 122 f., 

262 f., 386 f. 
Metaphysics, relation of, to epistemol- 
ogy, 11 f., 22, 350 f., 365 f., 530 f., 

559 f., 574 f. 
Mysticism, the Hindu, 34 f. ; its view 

of cognition, 61 f. 

Nature, the concept of, 518 f., 536, 

575 f. 
Nourisson, on Augustine, 47, 50. 

Object, the, Kant's ambiguities con- 
cerning, 120 f., 133 f. ; reality of, 
133 f. ; distinction of, 199 f. 

Opinion, as related to cognition, 234 f. 

Origen, doctrine of faith and knowl- 
edge, 31, 43 f., 46 ; merits of, 31, 42. 

Paulsen, on theory of knowledge, 
26 f., 263 (note) ; and self-knowledge, 
225 (note). 

Perception, Schopenhauer on, 136 ; 
cognition by, 148 f., 224 f., 250 f., 
264 f., 376 f . ; as trans-subjective, 
224 f., 376 f ., 447 f ., 474 f. ; sceptical 
view of, 376 f., 444 f. ; final purpose 
in, 475 f. 

Phenomenalism, fallacies of, 114 f . 



Plato, on nature of knowledge, 31 f. ; 

compared with Aristotle, 37 f. 
Psychology, nature of, 4 f. ; relation of, 

to epistemology, 5 f., 94 1, 132 f., 

142 f. ; of cognition, 94 f., 130 f., 

142 f., 160 f. 

Quality, category of, 420 f. 

Reality, nature of, 9 f., 153 f., 159, 
279 f., 361 f., 364 f., 499, 528; as 
given in cognition, 153 f., 208 f., 
279 f., 341 f., 347 f., 407 f., 480 f., 
530 f., 542 f. ; theories of, 559 f., 571, 
574 f. ; ideality of, 571 f. 

Reason, problems of, 8 f. ; Aristotle's 
view of, 37 f. ; teleology of, 479 f. 

Relation, the category of, 359 f., 401 f., 
418 f., 554 f., 577 f., 594 f . ; Mr. 
Bradley's view of, 418 f. 

Riehl, on Hume's epistemology, 65 ; on 
concept of being, 183 ; and distinc- 
tion of subject and object, 204 (note) ; 
on Knowledge and Reality, 345 ; on 
causation, 364. 

Romanes, view of faith and knowledge, 
231 f. 

Scepticism, limits of, 357 L, 367 f., 
379 f.; nature of, 367 f., 371 f. 

Schelling, on nature of cognition, 135 f. 

Schopenhauer, on nature of cognition, 
92 f, 108, 136, 266 f., 343, 543 f . ; 
exalts perception, 136, 480 ; criticism 
of Jacobi, 339 ; on Kant's " Critique," 
425. 

Schuppe, on form and content, 147. 

Science, conception of, 252 f., 298 f., 
329 f., 444 f., 482 f., 543; its use of 
causal principle, 298 (note), 315 f . ; 
teleology of, 489 f. 

Seashore, C. E., on illusions of sense, 
451 f. 

Self, the cognition of, 116 f., 127 f. 
169 f , 188 f., 193 f., 206 f., 220 f., 
227, 348 f., 361 f., 385 f., 461 f., 528, 
549 f.; the feeling of, 169 f., 188 f., 
211 f. ; reality of, 203 f., 216 f., 220 f., 
349 f., 518 f. ; identity of, 205 f., 273 f., 
281 f., 352 f. ; illusions of, 446 f. 

Solipsism, its assumptions, 116 f., 560 f. ; 
and fallacies, 116 f., 354 f., 563 f. 



614 



INDEX 



Spencer, Herbert, on nature of think- 
ing, 137; his agnosticism, 370 f., 
426 f., 592. 

Spinoza, his epistemology, 51, 61 f. 

Stoics, the, on nature of cognition, 38 f. ; 
and criteria of truth, 40 f . 

Stumpf, on objectivity of cognition, 
116. 

Sufficient Reason, principle of, 157, 
239 f., 270 f., 283 f., 315 f., 320; 
statement of, by logic, 286 f., 300 f. ; 
as used by science, 286 f ., 289 f., 295 f ., 
315 f. ; origin of, 296 f., 317 f. ; impli- 
cates of, 317 f. 

Sully, on " belief," 344 f. 

Syllogism, Aristotle on, 36 f. ; nature 
of, 157 f. (See also "Sufficient 
Reason.") 



Theory of Knowledge (see Episte- 
mology). 

Thing, nature of cognition of, 168 f., 
193 f., 214, 217 f., 221 f., 227, 448 f., 
561 f . ; real content of, 450 f. 

Thought, relation of, to cognition, 130 f ., 
258 f., 479 f.; as active, 137 f.; com- 
plexity of, 138 f . ; as an active relat- 
ing, 141 f . ; principles of, 268 f . ; 
283 f. 



Truth, nature of, 2 f., 354 f., 424 f., 
430 f., 434 f., 439 1; contained in 
judgment, 434 f., 437 f. ( 502 f. ; crite- 
ria of, 40 f., 452 f., 457 f., 461 f., 
466 f. ; postulates of, 157 f. ; as reached 
by argument, 283 f . ; related to con- 
duct, 430 f., 465 f. ; of perception, 
447 f . ; of science, 452 f., 489 f. 

Volkelt, on nature of experience, 
331 f. (note) ; and belief in Reality, 
468 (note). 

Volkmann, view of, as to origin of 
cognition, 98 f. 

Werner, on distinction of subject and 
object, 204 f. (note). 

Windelband, on history of epistemology, 
30 f., 42 (note), 53 (note); on Des- 
cartes, 61 ; and Leibnitz, 70. 

Wundt, on nature of thinking, 137 ; and 
distinction of subject and object, 223 ; 
classification of judgments, 278 ; cri- 
teria of truth, 461 f. ; nature of cog- 
nition, 474 ; identity of subject and 
object, 534. 

Zeller, on objectivity of cognition, 

223 f. 
Zeno, on nature of cognition, 39. 



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